From: james vassilakos Subject: sfrpg: mailing list To: jimv2@empirenet.com (Science-Fiction RPG) Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 19:12:26 -0700 (PDT) Hi all. Well... the sfrpg mailing list is finally ready. Its address is: jimv2@empirenet.com Here are the addresses it is currently forwarding mail to. jimv@cs.ucr.edu (Jim Vassilakos) jimv@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Jim Vassilakos) nv91-asa@nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) rhiemeir@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de (Joerg Rhiemeier) llvogel@mail.teleport.com (Allan Vogel) tlh@epsilon.com (Tony Hayes) larrys@zk3.dec.com (Larry Smith) The purpose, as you all know by now, is to help design a science-fiction rpg. I'm going to try to have an msdos-executable "care package" ready as soon as we get the starsystem generation stuff hacked out. Speaking of which, we may have a slight problem with the datafile (which Anders typed in from the Traveller 2300 RPG which is itself based on Gliese-1969 near star data). I'll share with you a conversation I've been having on sci.astro with one of the more learned denizens over there which relates to all this. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: jimv@cs.ucr.edu (james vassilakos) Newsgroups: sci.astro Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 15 Sep 1995 07:09:25 GMT Erik Max Francis (max@alcyone.darkside.com) wrote: : hutha@vms.csd.mu.edu writes: : : > My understanding is that smallish stars with few heavy : > elements are considered to be among the oldest stars. : : Low-mass main sequence stars (such as red dwarfs) _live_ for a long : time, but that doesn't necessarily imply that all of the red dwarfs : nearby are themselves old. I have a follow-up question about this. I was discussing star classes and population classes with a friend on the net. As you know, stars come in various size classifications: Ia, Ib, II, III, IV (giants); V (main sequence), VI (dwarfs), and VII (white dwarfs). As you also know, there are various population classifications: I (second and later generation stars, and II (first generation)... some astronomers also add a population class of III, meaning first generation in a more definitive sense, I suppose, but we can ignore this. In any case, my friend tells me that all type VI stars (the dwarfs) are population II (first generation), meaning that they have only hydrogen and helium, and that virtually all the population II stars are type VI except for those that have been around long enough to enter their giant stages (which are few and far between, since that stage doesn't last very long, any many of these type VI stars have a longevity that is really phenomenal (the candle that burns slowest burns longest, I guess). To quote him exactly: > As I said, GVI, KVI and MVI stars DON'T HAVE PLANETS. I think he means other than captured worlds. > AFAIK, it is just such that population II (i.e., 1st generation) stars > simply do have a different main sequence, due to their lack of heavy > elements. V is the main sequence of the later stars, thus GV, KV, and > MV are never 1st generation (unless they are 1st generation stars > crossing the main sequence on their way from their own main sequence > to the giant branch, which are of course VERY rare). VI is the main > sequence of the 1st generation stars, thus GVI, KVI and MVI are always > 1st generation. Well, this whole idea was new to me, so I went to the library, scrounged around for awhile in the astronomy section, and couldn't find any discussion on the topic. So, in short, does anybody know if this is true or not? Are all type VI stars of the 1st generation? I'm working on a program, and it would help to have a reliable answer to this question, and I'm a bit perturbed that I couldn't find such basic information in any of the introductory astronomy textbooks (not that I had many to investigate, small library). From: galaxy@ccnet.com (Ken Croswell) Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 15 Sep 1995 08:13:29 -0700 Organization: CCnet Communications (510-988-7140 guest) First of all, the type VI stars are not dwarfs; they are subdwarfs--metal-poor main-sequence stars. Their lower metallicity causes them to have lower luminosities than normal main-sequence stars, which are sometimes called "dwarfs"--hence the name "subdwarf," coined by Kuiper ApJ 89, 548 (1939). In our Galaxy, subdwarfs are members of the halo population. There is more about subdwarfs in Chapter 8 of my book, "The Rise of the Subdwarfs." Among other things, this chapter recounts the hostile reaction to the discovery that some stars had lower metallicities than the Sun. "The referee didn't believe any of this stuff," said [Lawrence] Aller. "He screamed and hollered and made us push all the parameters as far as we could until we reached a point and said, THIS `FUR' AND NO FURTHER." That paper was eventually accepted--see ApJ 114, 52 (1951)--but the referee forced Aller and his collaborator to modify their conclusions in a way now known to be wrong. A more technical account of subdwarfs appears in Section 3.6 of Mihalas and Binney's Galactic Astronomy (Freeman, 1981). Ken Croswell Author of The Alchemy of the Heavens (Doubleday/Anchor, 1995) From: uh101bs@hp22.lrz-muenchen.de (Dirk Husfeld) Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 15 Sep 1995 16:13:21 GMT Organization: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany) I found something like this in Erika Boehm-Vitense's book "Introduction to stellar astrophysics. Volume 1: Basic stellar observations and data", 1989, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-34402-6 (hard cover) or 0-521-34869-2 (paperback) on pages 107ff. All the other books I looked into are silent about sub-dwarfs. Basically, the view expressed above seems correct. That is, if restricted to sub-dwarfs of later spectral types. Sub-dwarfs of spectral type O or B (with which I am more familiar) are anything else but the Population II analog to O and B stars on the main sequence. (Of course, since any old star massive enough to have type B would have gone long ago.) Though they too seem to belong to an old population, they are not core hydrogen-burners and must have reached their present location in the HRD in a late stage of their evolution that is not yet fully understood. From: jimv@cs.ucr.edu (james vassilakos) Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 17 Sep 1995 02:58:25 GMT Organization: University of California, Riverside Ken Croswell (galaxy@ccnet.com) wrote: : First of all, the type VI stars are not dwarfs; they are : subdwarfs--metal-poor main-sequence stars. Their lower metallicity : causes them to have lower luminosities than normal main-sequence stars, : which are sometimes called "dwarfs"--hence the name "subdwarf," coined by : Kuiper ApJ 89, 548 (1939). In our Galaxy, subdwarfs are members of the : halo population. Thanks for the quick reply to this. I'll check into those books you suggested if I can find them. Since you seem to know this topic pretty well, however, I thought I'd shoot you a few more questions. The chart below (which isn't entirely above suspicion, but which I think is probably fairly accurate) shows forty-five subdwarfs (of the approximately 750 stars which are within fifty lightyears of Sol). That indicates to me that some 6% of the stars in the local vicinity are of Population II (all subdwarfs being of that population). Does all of this sound reasonable? star class dist star class dist ------------------------------------------------------ AC+10 95-26 M4VI 46.6 AC+19 1165-38 M5VI 46.5 AC+20 1463-148 M2VI 27.3 AC+20 1463-154 M2VI 27.3 AC+22 308-605 M2VI 42.2 AC+23 468-46 M2VI 21.6 AC+41 726-154 M4VI 39.7 AC+79 3888 M4VI 16.6 DM-2 2902 K0VI 45.9 DM-4 2226 M3VI 33.9 DM-14 5936 B M0VI 49.4 DM-17 6768 M5VI 42.3 DM-29 8019 M4VI 44.1 DM-31 9113 M2VI 35.8 DM-34 4036 B K3VI 44.6 DM-37 10765 A M4VI 24.9 DM-38 1058 M5VI 42.8 DM-39 10940 B M0VI 49.5 DM-40 9712 M4VI 19.3 DM-42 249B M0VI 43.4 DM-45 1184 M4VI 38.8 DM-45 5378 M4VI 29.9 DM-45 5627 M5VI 43.5 DM-46 11540 M4VI 15.2 DM-46 12902 B M0VI 46.6 DM-48 12818 M4VI 39.3 DM-51 13128 M0VI 47.2 DM-54 9222 B M0VI 39.8 Ac-48 1595 89 M3VI 23.5 G 5-43 M3VI 38.2 G107-69 A M6VI 43.4 dm+38 2285 G8VI 28.7 L489 58 A G0VI 43.5 L1064 75 M5VI 49.4 L1113 55 M5VI 49.4 Mu Cassiopei A G5VI 25.0 Ross 52 A M5VI 33.9 Ross 555 M4VI 36.9 Ross 974 K0VI 41.3 Theta Bootis B M3VI 47.3 Wolf 414 M5VI 41.8 Wolf 629 A M4VI 20.2 Wolf 906 M3VI 39.7 Wolf 918 M3VI 35.0 Wolf 1039 M4VI 40.7 My 2nd question: Do you think subdwarfs have any planets other than captured worlds? You said they had a low metallicity (not a zero-metallicity). I assume that if the metal-content is low enough, there would not be enough higher elements for planets to form. What do you think? 3rd question: Some of these subdwarfs are companions to type V main-sequence stars. Does that present any sort of inconsistency, a Population II star being a companion to a Population I star? 4th question: Dirk mentioned that some subdwarfs are class O or B. I thought the only possible subdwarf classes were G, K, and M. Thanks again for the reply. I hope you don't mind the additional questions. From: galaxy@ccnet.com (Ken Croswell) Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 18 Sep 1995 15:29:08 -0700 Organization: CCnet Communications (510-988-7140 guest) james vassilakos (jimv@cs.ucr.edu) wrote: : The chart below (which isn't entirely above suspicion, but which : I think is probably fairly accurate) shows forty-five subdwarfs : (of the approximately 750 stars which are within fifty lightyears : of Sol). That indicates to me that some 6% of the stars in the : local vicinity are of Population II (all subdwarfs being of that : population). Does all of this sound reasonable? OK, hang on; this is gonna get complicated.... "Population I" and "population II" originated with Baade, who in 1943 divided stars into two broad populations. Today, we know the Galaxy is considerably more complicated, and we recognize four different stellar populations. To make a long story short, they are: THE THIN DISK--metal-rich, various ages THE THICK DISK--old and somewhat metal-poor THE STELLAR HALO--old and very metal-poor; home of the subdwarfs THE BULGE--old and metal-rich To make a long story longer, I'll engage in some self-plagiarism from Alchemy (pages 62-63): As astronomers presently understand the Milky Way, every star falls into one of four different stellar populations. The brightest is the thin-disk population, to which the Sun and 96 percent of its neighbors belong. Sirius, Vega, Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Alpha Centauri are all members. Stars in the thin disk come in a wide variety of ages, from newborn objects to stars that are 10 billion years old. As its name implies, the thin-disk population clings to the Galactic plane, with a typical member lying within a thousand light-years of it. Kinematically, the stars revolve around the Galaxy fast, having fairly circular orbits and small U, V, W velocities. Thin-disk stars are also metal-rich, like the Sun. The second stellar population in the Galaxy is called the thick disk, which accounts for about 4 percent of all stars near the Sun. Arcturus is a likely member. The thick disk is old and forms a more distended system around the Galactic plane, with a typical star lying several thousand light-years above or below it. The stars have more elliptical orbits, higher U, V, W velocities, and metallicities around 25 percent of the Sun's. The third stellar population is known as the halo. Halo stars are old and rare, accounting for only 0.1 to 0.2 percent of the stars near the Sun. Kapteyn's Star is the closest halo star to Earth. These stars make up a somewhat spherical system, so most members of the halo lie far above or far below the Galactic plane. Kinematically, halo stars as a group show little if any net rotation around the Galaxy, and a typical member therefore has a very negative V velocity. The stars often have extremely elliptical orbits: a halo star may lie 100,000 light-years from the Galactic center at apogalacticon but venture within a few thousand at perigalacticon. Metallicities are even lower than in the thick disk, usually between 1 and 10 percent of the Sun's. The fourth and final stellar population is the bulge, which lies at the center of the Galaxy and can be seen in other edge-on spiral galaxies as the bump that extends above and below the galaxy's plane at the center. The Galactic bulge is old and metal-rich. Most of its stars lie within a few thousand light-years of the Galactic center, so few if any exist near the Sun. Consequently, the bulge is the least explored stellar population in the Milky Way. Now, since halo stars make up 0.1 to 0.2 percent of nearby stars, this is roughly the percentage of nearby stars that should be subdwarfs, if the thick disk is not also contributing subdwarfs. So 6 percent is too high. : star class dist star class dist : ------------------------------------------------------ : AC+10 95-26 M4VI 46.6 AC+19 1165-38 M5VI 46.5 : AC+20 1463-148 M2VI 27.3 AC+20 1463-154 M2VI 27.3 : AC+22 308-605 M2VI 42.2 AC+23 468-46 M2VI 21.6 : AC+41 726-154 M4VI 39.7 AC+79 3888 M4VI 16.6 : DM-2 2902 K0VI 45.9 DM-4 2226 M3VI 33.9 : DM-14 5936 B M0VI 49.4 DM-17 6768 M5VI 42.3 : DM-29 8019 M4VI 44.1 DM-31 9113 M2VI 35.8 : DM-34 4036 B K3VI 44.6 DM-37 10765 A M4VI 24.9 : DM-38 1058 M5VI 42.8 DM-39 10940 B M0VI 49.5 : DM-40 9712 M4VI 19.3 DM-42 249B M0VI 43.4 : DM-45 1184 M4VI 38.8 DM-45 5378 M4VI 29.9 : DM-45 5627 M5VI 43.5 DM-46 11540 M4VI 15.2 : DM-46 12902 B M0VI 46.6 DM-48 12818 M4VI 39.3 : DM-51 13128 M0VI 47.2 DM-54 9222 B M0VI 39.8 : Ac-48 1595 89 M3VI 23.5 G 5-43 M3VI 38.2 : G107-69 A M6VI 43.4 dm+38 2285 G8VI 28.7 : L489 58 A G0VI 43.5 L1064 75 M5VI 49.4 : L1113 55 M5VI 49.4 Mu Cassiopei A G5VI 25.0 : Ross 52 A M5VI 33.9 Ross 555 M4VI 36.9 : Ross 974 K0VI 41.3 Theta Bootis B M3VI 47.3 : Wolf 414 M5VI 41.8 Wolf 629 A M4VI 20.2 : Wolf 906 M3VI 39.7 Wolf 918 M3VI 35.0 : Wolf 1039 M4VI 40.7 This list looks fishy. Most of these stars are spectral type M, and it is very difficult to determine their metallicities. On your list, I checked at random half a dozen of the M stars here and found that not a single one had halo kinematics. Most of the subdwarfs that astronomers study are spectral types F or G, because these stars' metallicities can be determined from their ultraviolet excesses. The two most famous subdwarfs are Groombridge 1830 (listed here as DM+38 2285) and Mu Cassiopeiae, both spectral type G. If you want LOTS of subdwarfs, see Laird, Carney, and Latham (1988), AJ 95, 1843. There are over 800 stars, with roughly a couple hundred having halo metallicities and being subdwarfs. Also, Sandage has long searched for subdwarfs. See Sandage and Fouts (1987)--AJ 93, 74--for a list of over a thousand stars, again with metallicities (in the form of the UV excess) listed. Over 300 have halo metallicities and are subdwarfs. : My 2nd question: Do you think subdwarfs have any planets other : than captured worlds? You said they had a low metallicity (not a : zero-metallicity). I assume that if the metal-content is low : enough, there would not be enough higher elements for planets : to form. What do you think? Earthlike planets need metals; it would be tough to form such planets around subdwarfs. Jupiter and Saturn might still form, since they are mostly hydrogen and helium. But the planets' cores are mostly heavier elements, so they might have trouble forming, too. : 3rd question: Some of these subdwarfs are companions to type V : main-sequence stars. Does that present any sort of inconsistency, : a Population II star being a companion to a Population I star? Yes. : 4th question: Dirk mentioned that some subdwarfs are class O or : B. I thought the only possible subdwarf classes were G, K, and M. Subdwarf O and B stars exist, but as Dirk mentioned they don't have anything to do with the stars you have been asking about. They are not, in general, halo stars. : Thanks again for the reply. I hope you don't mind the additional : questions. Questions from non-crackpots are always welcome. From: jimv@cs.ucr.edu (james vassilakos) Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 19 Sep 1995 19:25:16 GMT Organization: University of California, Riverside Ken Croswell (galaxy@ccnet.com) wrote: : Now, since halo stars make up 0.1 to 0.2 percent of nearby stars, : this is roughly the percentage of nearby stars that should be subdwarfs, : if the thick disk is not also contributing subdwarfs. So 6 percent is : too high. : This list looks fishy. Most of these stars are spectral type M, : and it is very difficult to determine their metallicities. On your list, : I checked at random half a dozen of the M stars here and found that not a : single one had halo kinematics. So what you're telling me is that these stars (or the vast majority of them) are really type V, main-sequence, and not type VI, subdwarf? It is possible that the list is out-of-date. It originally came from the 1950 Gliese Catalog, if I'm not mistaken. They may have simply miscatagorized them as subdwarfs due to obsolete theories or observation techniques (just a guess). : : 3rd question: Some of these subdwarfs are companions to type V : : main-sequence stars. Does that present any sort of inconsistency, : : a Population II star being a companion to a Population I star? : : Yes. Hmm... so my problem is probably bad data. That really sucks :-( I need to find new data. Hmm... maybe you know of a source. I'm working from a list of about 750 stars (749 to be exact), based on 1969 data. This list has the star name, the cartesian coordinates expressed in light years, and the stellar class & type as well as other data which I don't care about. So, for example, Sirius is represented by two entries. Sirius A,-1.6,8.1,-2.5,A1v Sirius B,-1.6,8.1,-2.5,A0vii So I can see that the Sirius system contains a white main sequence with a white dwarf companion, and I can actually plot its coordinates relative to Sol, in effect constructing a three-dimensional map with all the stars within fifty lightyears of Sol. Do you know of any IBM-readable text file containing either this info or data from which I could yank or derive this info? If I could get my hands on some good data, I could write a basic program to extract the essence of what I'm looking for, so long as it's in a format (such as text) which I can read. From: strobel@u.washington.edu (Nicolas Strobel) Subject: Re: Star age question Date: 20 Sep 1995 19:04:28 GMT Organization: University of Washington jimv@cs.ucr.edu (james vassilakos) writes: >Do you know of any IBM-readable text file containing either this >info or data from which I could yank or derive this info? If I >could get my hands on some good data, I could write a basic program >to extract the essence of what I'm looking for, so long as it's >in a format (such as text) which I can read. The place to check out is nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov. Telnet there and log in as nodis. Select the Astronomical Data Center menu option. You'll have to do some digging from there but look for 'nearby' in the titles. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I did check this site out, and it looks like it might have what I'm looking for. I won't be certain, however, until I've got my grubby little hands on the data(text)file I'm looking for. -jimv From: james vassilakos Subject: sfrpg: star data options Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 01:22:24 -0700 (PDT) Hi all. Well, I got two files with newer near star data from nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov. As is usual for this sort of material, I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to extract the information I'm looking for (in particular, the x/y/z coordinates of the systems in relation to Sol). Of course, there are other heinous problems as well. In any case, I've temporarily attached the files to my web page: http://cs.ucr.edu/~jimv Goto the "science fiction rpg" option if you're interested in taking a quick peek. The way I see it, there are several options. (1) Ignore this new data, and continue to use the 1969 data as provided/interpreted by GDW's T-2300. Granted, the GDW data has Class VI (Pop II) stars appearing 6% of the time, which is probably too high, and granted, these Class VI (Pop II) stars occasionally companion Class V stars (probably Pop I), which looks a bit unlikely. So there are probably some rather severe problems with the data, but so what... it's just a game... and who's really gonna notice? (2) Use the old data as before, but modify it by nuking all or the majority of Class VI stars (making them Class V). Seems a bit arbitrary. (3) Try to use this new (1991) data and see how it matches or doesn't match against the older data. Probably the most difficult option to actually implement. What do you think? Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 10:32:40 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > Hi all. Well, I got two files with newer near star data from > nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov. As is usual for this sort of material, > I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to extract the information > I'm looking for (in particular, the x/y/z coordinates of the > systems in relation to Sol). Of course, there are other > heinous problems as well. As for the xyz position, it should be sufficient to treat the RA and Dec as if they were heleocentric and do a simple (ok, not so simple) polar to retangular conversion then factor in range. The assumption with RA and Dec is that they don't change significantly with terrestrial movements - they do of course but not significantly. The fact that they do is called parallax and is used to estimate the distance to nearby stars. It is in fact one of the most accurate methods we have as all other methods - that I am aware of - have built-in assumptions that may be wrong. In fact, while looking at your data, it appears they don't even give a range only a parallax (did I miss the range?). Ok, now it gets tricky...because I have to remember stuff I haven't done in years... the diagram below (exagerated of course) shows what is happening. The angle e1-star-e2 is the angle of parallax. A line connecting the star with the sun bisects the angle and forms two right triangles: e1-star-sun and e2-star-sun. Given the angle of parallax and the fact that the distance between the earth and the sun are known you can get range using simple trig relations. And you know what, it just dawned on me that you probably already know this, don't you? Sorry, its the teacher in me (my wife hates it too when I spontaneously explain things to her - some she knows and some she don't care about). Star . . . . . . . . . . . ............. E1 Sun E2 Anyway, since I'm already explaining everything, now that we have the distance, we convert RA and Dec in polar angles then using the polar angles and the range, you get the i,j,k for the star. I'm resisting the urge to explain how to do this but, if you want, I'd be willing to whip up a program to do the conversions for you, just let me know. > (1) Ignore this new data, and continue to use the 1969 data as > provided/interpreted by GDW's T-2300. Granted, the GDW data > has Class VI (Pop II) stars appearing 6% of the time, which > is probably too high, and granted, these Class VI (Pop II) > stars occasionally companion Class V stars (probably Pop I), > which looks a bit unlikely. So there are probably some > rather severe problems with the data, but so what... it's > just a game... and who's really gonna notice? YOU for one. If you're spending this much effort already, why not a small bit more to get more up-to-date and accurate information? > (2) Use the old data as before, but modify it by nuking all or > the majority of Class VI stars (making them Class V). Seems > a bit arbitrary. You could use the 91 data to update star classes then continue with the 69 data > (3) Try to use this new (1991) data and see how it matches or > doesn't match against the older data. Probably the most > difficult option to actually implement. If you're using the new data, why do you care if it matches? Is there something in the old data you need/want? Can it not be found in the new data or derived from it? Well, my $0.01 (wasn't worth a whole 2 cents). From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 10:41:06 -0700 (PDT) > In fact, while looking at your data, it appears they don't even give > a range only a parallax (did I miss the range?). You noiticed that too, eh? > Star > . > . . > . . > . . > . . > . . > ............. > E1 Sun E2 Yeah, I've got the basic concept of parallax. And given the angles at E1 and E2, I sure I could figure out distance. I'm just vague on which info I need to yank from the chart to do this. > Anyway, since I'm already explaining everything, now that we have the > distance, we convert RA and Dec in polar angles then using the polar > angles and the range, you get the i,j,k for the star. > > I'm resisting the urge to explain how to do this but, if you want, I'd > be willing to whip up a program to do the conversions for you, just > let me know. By all means. Either that or hit me over the head with an algorithm in english. > > (1) Ignore this new data, and continue to use the 1969 data as > YOU for one. If you're spending this much effort already, why not a > small bit more to get more up-to-date and accurate information? My thoughts exactly. However, there is another problem with the 1991 data. The star names. They seem exceedingly abbreviated where they exist at all. Would require some work to put them back in order. > > (2) Use the old data as before, but modify it by nuking all or > > the majority of Class VI stars (making them Class V). Seems > > a bit arbitrary. > You could use the 91 data to update star classes then continue > with the 69 data Which assumes I can look at a 69-data star and find its counterpart in the 91-data. A fair possibility. A bit of work though, depending on how many stars need double-checking. > > (3) Try to use this new (1991) data and see how it matches or > > doesn't match against the older data. Probably the most > > difficult option to actually implement. > If you're using the new data, why do you care if it matches? Is there > something in the old data you need/want? Can it not be found in the > new data or derived from it? True. I'm thinking two things here... star names and star classes. There's no guarantee the new data is any "better" than the old when it comes to the issue of star classes, but this should be easy enough to look into simply by doing a population count and comparing the percentages. Looking again, however, the 91-data doesn't even seem go give class data (Ia, Ib, II, II, IV, V, VI) on a regular basis. I'm shaking my head here thinking that this is going to be somewhere between hellish and impossible (sort of like navigating an Orion minefield :-) Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 18:59:21 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > > As for the xyz position, it should be sufficient to treat the > RA and Dec as if they were heleocentric and do a simple (ok, not > so simple) polar to retangular conversion then factor in range. x = r cos (theta) cos (psi) y = r sin (theta) cos (psi) z = r sin (psi) where theta is the RA (I think) and psi is the Dec, both expressed in radians. The trouble is, as noted, finding r. There is a very good book with astronomical formulas down at my library with this formula, but its closed right now. If needed I could look it up, but I think several of the esteemed list-members have similar works within reach. > > (1) Ignore this new data, and continue to use the 1969 data as > > provided/interpreted by GDW's T-2300. Granted, the GDW data > > has Class VI (Pop II) stars appearing 6% of the time, which > > is probably too high, and granted, these Class VI (Pop II) > > stars occasionally companion Class V stars (probably Pop I), > > which looks a bit unlikely. So there are probably some > > rather severe problems with the data, but so what... it's > > just a game... and who's really gonna notice? > > YOU for one. If you're spending this much effort already, why not a > small bit more to get more up-to-date and accurate information? Besides, we have probably discovered lots of dim stars near to the sun recently (this was one of my major irritations with 2300AD, where brown dwarves had major importance as "shortcuts" due to the properties of the stutterwarp). Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 14:42:50 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > Yeah, I've got the basic concept of parallax. And given the angles > at E1 and E2, I sure I could figure out distance. I'm just vague on > which info I need to yank from the chart to do this. Yep, the readme is a bit confusing. > > I'm resisting the urge to explain how to do this but, if you want, I'd > > be willing to whip up a program to do the conversions for you, just > > let me know. > > By all means. Either that or hit me over the head with an algorithm > in english. I'll see if I can't put one or the other together over the next few days (I have a book at home with handy astrometric formulae). > > > (1) Ignore this new data, and continue to use the 1969 data as > > YOU for one. If you're spending this much effort already, why not a > > small bit more to get more up-to-date and accurate information? > > My thoughts exactly. However, there is another problem with the > 1991 data. The star names. They seem exceedingly abbreviated > where they exist at all. Would require some work to put them > back in order. Yeah, this is aggrevated by the fact that most stars and hence most nearby stars, are quite dim and often don't get real names - sometimes only numbers. There are two choices here, as I see it. You can use what you got or you can make up your own names. I believe that routine use of space will translate into names for stars that at the moment are just too unremarkable (thus making them good for life cause who wants to live on a planet orbiting a variable star?) to have names. I can't see that colonists and travellers in space will continue to call a star NGC 2309 when "Jacob's Star" would be better. In short, I think if you argue that these people named the stars and provide a mapping from your name to the official designation then you won't have to worry about it. You will have too be sure, I guess, that it doesn't already _have_ a name though. On the otherhand, any system that is essentially uncolonized or used only for bases or mining will likely remain unnamed - unless its _really_ active. > True. I'm thinking two things here... star names and star classes. > There's no guarantee the new data is any "better" than the old when > it comes to the issue of star classes, but this should be easy > enough to look into simply by doing a population count and comparing > the percentages. Looking again, however, the 91-data doesn't even > seem go give class data (Ia, Ib, II, II, IV, V, VI) on a regular > basis. I'm shaking my head here thinking that this is going to be > somewhere between hellish and impossible (sort of like navigating > an Orion minefield :-) > Tell me about it. Can you put your 69 data on line? Maybe if I can get both of them together in one place, I can do some kind of mapping (assuming you have the 69 data in electronic format - if not I probably can find it on-line someplace). From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 13:26:41 -0700 (PDT) > Yeah, this is aggrevated by the fact that most stars and hence > most nearby stars, are quite dim and often don't get real names - > sometimes only numbers. There are two choices here, as I see it. > You can use what you got or you can make up your own names. I believe > that routine use of space will translate into names for stars that > at the moment are just too unremarkable (thus making them good for > life cause who wants to live on a planet orbiting a variable star?) to > have names. I can't see that colonists and travellers in space will > continue to call a star NGC 2309 when "Jacob's Star" would be better. True, but I would like to use the original names where appropriate. GDW's 1969 list is full of quite a few of these. > In short, I think if you argue that these people named the stars and > provide a mapping from your name to the official designation then you > won't have to worry about it. You will have too be sure, I guess, that > it doesn't already _have_ a name though. On the otherhand, any system > that is essentially uncolonized or used only for bases or mining will > likely remain unnamed - unless its _really_ active. Well, I can see many of the worlds having aliens names also. Currently, the way the program I'm writing works, each stars has a name but there's also a comments section of up to two lines, and I'm having the star generation program put "Formerly known as Alpha Hydri" or whatever, so having those names in the data file is kind of helpful. > Tell me about it. Can you put your 69 data on line? Maybe if I can > get both of them together in one place, I can do some kind of mapping > (assuming you have the 69 data in electronic format - if not I probably > can find it on-line someplace). Just put it online at http://cs.ucr.edu/~jimv in the same location as the 1991 data. Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 15:03:46 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Anders Sandberg wrote: > x = r cos (theta) cos (psi) > y = r sin (theta) cos (psi) > z = r sin (psi) > where theta is the RA (I think) and psi is the Dec, both expressed in > radians. The trouble is, as noted, finding r. There is a very good book > with astronomical formulas down at my library with this formula, but its > closed right now. If needed I could look it up, but I think several of > the esteemed list-members have similar works within reach. I have a couple books with the needed stuff and you are right, RA is theta (transformed from HMS to DMS or radians) and Dec is psi (more or less a direct mapping). > Besides, we have probably discovered lots of dim stars near to the sun > recently (this was one of my major irritations with 2300AD, where brown > dwarves had major importance as "shortcuts" due to the properties of the > stutterwarp). I must confess that I've never bothered wtih 2300AD prefering the more grandiose appraoch of Traveller/Spacemaster/Star Trek. Is there a reason we are compelled to stay nearby Earth? Is this an early space exploration game? Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 23:43:39 -0800 From: llvogel@teleport.com (Laura L. and Allan Hayes Vogel) Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options Hi all, Please excuse the slowness of these observations as I started teaching today and thus have quickly became very busy, but I have two questions about this discussion. 1) Granted that 2300 AD was all excited about using brown dwarves in their game, does that made them necessarily important in Jim's? Speaking as an ecologist, _I_ wouldn't recommend anyone wasting very valuable stellar drive vessels checking those systems out after the first one or two. Mining maybe, but does that lead to a high number of good gaming ideas? It seems like (and I do this to an extreme degree too, so I don't mean this as a criticism) you're getting bogged down in details instead of focusing on the overall concept. While my past supervisers will tell you that I'm a bear for the details, and so make projects run late, still there's a point at which you have to say ENOUGH. Having gamed quite a bit, I'd start watching out for the civil engineers' alligators about now as it seems to me you might lose some potential players due to a lack of playable ideas in _multiple_-examples of brown dwarf systems. 2) I seem to have missed the point for deciding why 2300 AD's Star List is _grossly_ inadequate for your purposes. Briefly, what's is causing you to reject using it after adding corrections? Maybe my remarks are due to a different focus, i.e., I'm interested in potential systems for habitable planets only. If so, I've probably missed an overall game idea and my apologies for wasting bandwidth. Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 12:44:35 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > I must confess that I've never bothered wtih 2300AD prefering the more > grandiose appraoch of Traveller/Spacemaster/Star Trek. 2300AD was very well made in certain respects, with big holes in other areas. Its physics, astronomy, planetology and technology was quite good and believable, although GDW did some big mistakes when it came to culture, economics or sociology. > Is there a reason > we are compelled to stay nearby Earth? Is this an early space exploration > game? In the discussions I have had with James, we settled on the idea that it is hard and expensive to move between the stars. The hyperdrive I imagined (essentially an Alcubierre warp drive with some extra technobabble) would require some very expensive materials and *lots* of energy (the basis for interstellar economy) to start. Probably you could go further with more energy, but humans are in the minor league anyway and probably don't have access to that kind of technology. One interesting idea is that there are essentially two kinds of starships: Two-way ships have their own huge powerplants and are able to move from system to system as they wish, independently of whether there are refuelling in the systems or not (of course, very rare and expensive). Ideal for scouting, colonization or military applications. One way ships are powered by in-system installations (say, a network of lasers) so they can warp away, forcing them to travel between civilized systems. But they are much cheaper, and there are strong economic incentives for the locals to build refueling stations to get trade. I have also got the impression that in this game, earthlings are very much the new kids on the block, just beginning to venture out into interstellar space. That would also make it probable that humans would remain near the local area for some time (even if this is a complete backwater and the nearest big economic centre might be the Hyades, 300 ly away). Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 12:53:05 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Laura L. and Allan Hayes Vogel wrote: > 1) Granted that 2300 AD was all excited about using brown dwarves in their > game, does that made them necessarily important in Jim's? Probably only as a (rare) traffic hazard... > Speaking as an > ecologist, _I_ wouldn't recommend anyone wasting very valuable stellar > drive vessels checking those systems out after the first one or two. Mining > maybe, but does that lead to a high number of good gaming ideas? I can see one use for them, and that might be mid-way refuelling stations (especially if they can be mined for fusionables). If we decide that it is economically better to travel two short distances instead of one long, then they might become the gasoline stations of the interstellar desert... > It seems > like (and I do this to an extreme degree too, so I don't mean this as a > criticism) you're getting bogged down in details instead of focusing on the > overall concept. While my past supervisers will tell you that I'm a bear > for the details, and so make projects run late, still there's a point at > which you have to say ENOUGH. Having gamed quite a bit, I'd start watching > out for the civil engineers' alligators about now as it seems to me you > might lose some potential players due to a lack of playable ideas in > _multiple_-examples of brown dwarf systems. I think you are completely right. While it would be nice to have a physically reasonable system and correct stars, I think the most important thing is to make a workable game with a fascinating setting. Thats why I concentrate more on my aliens (maybe I should post the ones I have written up something for?). Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 15:04:22 +0000 (WET) From: Henrik Ohrstrom med Subject: Science-Fiction RPG mailing list Hello, I heard from Anders Sandberg about the science-fiction RPG and I think it sounds very interesting. So I would like to join the mailing list if possible. Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 12:09:50 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: source code This program reads the 91 datafile (assumed to be in the same directory as where you run this program and assumed to be called data.text but you can change those easily enough). It outputs into the current working directory a file called results.text that contains the x, y, and z, the range and the identifier. It runs under unix. Its sloppy, quick, and dirty but it works (as far as I can tell). ---cut here--- #include #include #define FACTOR (3.14159/180.) #define NUM_REC 3803 main() { FILE *data_fp, *out_fp; char junk[258], ident[13]; float parallax, range, dec_min, theta, psi; int ra_h, ra_m, ra_s, dec_deg, p_flag=0, count; data_fp = fopen("data.text", "r"); out_fp = fopen("results.text", "w"); fprintf(out_fp, "Ident Range X Y Z\n"); for (count=0; count < NUM_REC; count++) { fgets(ident, 12, data_fp); fscanf(data_fp, "%d", &ra_h); fscanf(data_fp, "%d", &ra_m); fscanf(data_fp, "%d", &ra_s); theta = 15. * (ra_h + ra_m/60. + ra_s/3600.); fscanf(data_fp, "%d", &dec_deg); fscanf(data_fp, "%f", &dec_min); if (dec_deg < 0) psi = (float) dec_deg - dec_min/60.; else psi = (float) dec_deg + dec_min/60.; fgets(junk, 80, data_fp); fscanf(data_fp, "%f", ¶llax); fgets(junk, 257, data_fp); range = 1./(0.001*parallax); if (p_flag != 0) { /* printf("\nIdentifier %s\n", ident); printf("RA is %2d Hours %2d Minutes %2d Seconds\n", ra_h, ra_m, ra_s); printf("Theta is %f\n", theta); printf("Dec is %3d Degrees %4.1f Minutes\n", dec_deg, dec_min); printf("Psi is %f\n", psi); printf("Parallax is %6.1f\n", parallax); printf("Range (from parallax) is %4.1f parsecs\n", range); printf("X = %4.1f, Y = %4.1f, Z = %4.1f \n", range * cos(FACTOR*theta) * cos(FACTOR*psi), range * sin(FACTOR*theta) * cos(FACTOR*psi), range * sin(FACTOR*psi)); */ fprintf(out_fp, "%10s %4.1f %4.1f %4.1f %4.1f\n", ident, range, range * cos(FACTOR*theta) * cos(FACTOR*psi), range * sin(FACTOR*theta) * cos(FACTOR*psi), range * sin(FACTOR*psi)); } if (p_flag == 0) p_flag++; } } Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 13:21:54 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Laura L. and Allan Hayes Vogel wrote: > 1) Granted that 2300 AD was all excited about using brown dwarves in their > game, does that made them necessarily important in Jim's? Speaking as an > ecologist, _I_ wouldn't recommend anyone wasting very valuable stellar > drive vessels checking those systems out after the first one or two. Mining > maybe, but does that lead to a high number of good gaming ideas? It seems Not only does the mining concept fall a little short on the interest scale, it also tasks believability. Brown dwarfs are cool but not cold. Further, the surface gravity could prove difficult - granted it may not be a black hole, but that doesn't prevent the surface gravity from being too high to tolerate. Even if we ignore both these issues, there's the cost of lifting things out of a gravity well that deep. You'd be far better off mining gas giants for hydrogen or icy asteroids or comets > like (and I do this to an extreme degree too, so I don't mean this as a > criticism) you're getting bogged down in details instead of focusing on the > overall concept. While my past supervisers will tell you that I'm a bear > for the details, and so make projects run late, still there's a point at > which you have to say ENOUGH. Having gamed quite a bit, I'd start watching True but spending some time playing with the details isn't all bad either. It can lead to some interesting insights. You just, as you said, have to know when to say _enough!_ and move on. Given that this is a SF game, spending some time trying to get the local stars right can add flavor - so long as it doesn't bog down the total effort too much. > 2) I seem to have missed the point for deciding why 2300 AD's Star List is > _grossly_ inadequate for your purposes. Briefly, what's is causing you to > reject using it after adding corrections? I think part of it is matching the corrections to the 2300 AD list. Again, a little time and effort here could be useful but I agree that we don't want to get too tied up in this and I don't think we have yet. > Maybe my remarks are due to a different focus, i.e., I'm interested in > potential systems for habitable planets only. If so, I've probably missed > an overall game idea and my apologies for wasting bandwidth. Not at all however I think making some decisions in this arena will have great impact on the overall game look and feel. Take Traveller, how did all those low tech planets (pre-star flight) get so populated? Why is the galaxy so _full_? Etc. By spending some time thinking about the universe (or at least our little piece of it) we can lay down a foundation and justification for future work - aliens, pop density, etc. - that feels a little more realisitic (as least based on our assumptions). And that doesn't mean we have to be realistic as in true to fact but realistic as in not too far from fact and (more importantly) reasonably internally consistent. Just my thoughts Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 13:30:48 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Tue, 26 Sep 1995, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > Is there a reason we are compelled to stay nearby Earth? > > Is this an early space exploration game? > > In the discussions I have had with James, we settled on the idea that it > is hard and expensive to move between the stars. The hyperdrive I imagined > (essentially an Alcubierre warp drive with some extra technobabble) would > require some very expensive materials and *lots* of energy (the basis for > interstellar economy) to start. Probably you could go further with more > energy, but humans are in the minor league anyway and probably don't have > access to that kind of technology. Can you (if its not too premature) explain the warp drive a little bit more - as you picture it working (some of your comments hinted but a little clearer explaination would be useful). > One way ships are powered by in-system installations (say, a network of > lasers) so they can warp away, forcing them to travel between civilized > systems. But they are much cheaper, and there are strong economic > incentives for the locals to build refueling stations to get trade. So you have two (or more) systems hurling ships back and forth like a game of catch? Hmm...interesting. Would kind of cut down on piracy wouldn't it? What are the travel times like? How do you handle accidents (aiming errors that is - opps missed the system cause I was off by 0.000001 arcseconds :-) )? From: james vassilakos Subject: sfrpg: the basic premise Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 19:42:45 -0700 (PDT) Every RPG-setting needs a premise. Here's what I've got cookin' so far: The Awakening Homo Sapiens had been around on Earth for well over a hundred- thousand years when the Old Ones (also known as the Jihuti) first arrived. What these aliens from the stars stumbled upon was a race of beings very much like themselves in their own distant past, a race which though it had managed to fabricate and use tools to some primitive extent and which walked on two legs as they did, was still perhaps a million years away from naturally evolving the sort of intelligence that would allow them to take their place among the stars, and even that would only happen with the most phenomenal of luck. The Old Ones, though very ancient, were not a patient race. They believed in making friends... literally... and decided to genetically enhance mankind, boosting the complexity of his brain while leaving his physical form unaltered. This was ten-thousand years ago, and Humanity hasn't been quite the same ever since. A Dangerous Savage Child-Race Although the Old Ones could bestow upon Humanity the flames of intelligence, they could not foresee the path it would burn. The child race's first invention was warfare. Thousands died in bloody carnage despite intervention after intervention. The Old ones were perplexed. This had never happened before. Other child races had been able to cope with their changing world without resulting to violence to solve every problem. Humanity was somehow different. The key difference, perhaps, was the psychology which evolution had bestowed. Humanity had never really occupied a specific ecological niche. They could hunt, gather, and even scavenge when the opportunity presented itself. Unlike the other child races, they were versatile in the extreme, and this versatility was partly the result of a strange mixture of several emotions and motivations which were the core of the human psyche. As a xeno- biologist of a later millennium would describe them, Humanity was as its heart a combination of "fear, opportunism, and every- being-for-himself high-adrenalin-savagery." The Great War & The Technology Ceiling Around the time that the Vandals were plundering Rome, another Empire was also in disintegration. The Old Ones had hatched a veritable multitude of races, yet, while they were undisputed geniuses at the art of genetic uplifting, they were somewhat lacking in the art of government. Several of their child races had reached the same technology level which the Old Ones had attained long ago. This was the technology ceiling, the point at which progress stopped for all "backwater" communities (those without a multitude to high energy stars such as those societies which exist in the spiral arms and in the galactic core), and this created a situation where all races were more or less equal. The problem was that the child races had not been treated as equals, but rather as a cross between underlings and slaves, and not a year went past where they were not reminded of what their situation would be had they not been so generously uplifted in the first place. Many of these races wanted to colonize new worlds, to expand their civilizations, and essentially, to stretch out, however, all the good worlds in the local area had already been taken by the Old Ones themselves or were ecological preserves for races which had been uplifted some time during the recent past but which had not yet attained a technical civilization. The child races wanted a bigger piece of the pie than they'd been handed, and at the instigation of one of their number, a war was begun which, within several years, had utterly wiped out the Old Ones, leaving only the child races in their wake. The Coalition Though the Old Ones themselves had perished within the early years of the war, the fighting continued for many decades thereafter. Without a parental figure to bind them together, the child races were free to fight each other in pursuit of their separate agendas. Some of these races were utterly extinguished during these years. Several others, seeing that the situation had gotten totally out of control, decided to band together in an attempt to stop the fighting. This resulted in the Interstellar Coalition which exists today. Policy toward Newcomers Toward the end of the war, another uplifted race had attained FTL for the first time. It had never been contacted by the other races. In all the chaos of the preceding century, it had been virtually ignored. Unfortunately, the exploration vessel which it sent out was mistook by one species as an enemy warship, and open hostilities resulted which soon culminated in the nuking of the newcomer's homeworld. Before the race could be totally rubbed out, however, several Coalition members stepped in to intervene. The Newcomer was saved, but only just barely. From that time forward, the policy toward newcomers (races, uplifted or otherwise, which are just attaining FTL) has been as follows: (1) If they seem capable of peaceful coexistence, then they are offered membership in the Coalition. If they refuse, they are prohibited from leaving the confines or their own star system, but they are guaranteed that their own space won't be violated by unwelcome trespassers. Alternately, they may request the guardianship of a coalition member, which means that they are subject to the laws of that member and are, hence, indirectly, a member of the coalition, through the auspices of their guardian. (2) If they don't seem capable of peaceful coexistence, then they may be exterminated for the common good or turned over to another race for obligatory guardianship. Generally, their star system is incorporated into the territory of a nearby race, and that race disposes of the newcomer as they see fit. Any child race which mismanages its own world such that its civilization begins collapsing into ruins before it attains FTL automatically falls into this category. Odds against Earth By the middle of the 20th century the majority of the coalition races regarded Earth as little more than a barbaric curiosity, and a passing one at that, the only proto-newcomer known to have tapped nuclear power before developing supersonic flight. Some lamented the day that the Solians (the Earthers) should ever achieve FTL. Nonetheless, the majority were comforted by the fact that Earth was slowly destroying itself with carbon dioxide emissions and that the Solian civilization would most likely collapse from within before it ever made it off its homeworld. Already, they began discussing who among them would inherit Sol. As it happened, the solar system was situated along the border of two different alien states, the Hifaru and the Ikkadju. The former were a small, amphibious, grey-skinned race of vegetarian bipeds (the Old Ones were bipedal also and had a preference for uplifting bipeds, believing them more suited to technological society). The Ikkadju, on the other hand, were large avian carnivores which longed for garden worlds such as Earth, and which had begun campaigning vigorously for the Coalition's authorization to expand its borders to encompass the solar system before Humanity should utterly ruin the planet. First Contact First contact between a modern Earth government and an alien race occurred in the late 1940s between the United States and the Hifaru. The U.S. military got exceedingly lucky and shot down a Hifaru reconnaissance vessel which had been damaged in foul weather (struck by lightning). The Hifaru were attempting to gather more precise data on the rate of technological progress on Earth despite Coalition edicts warning all members to stay away from the planet. The event, the most important perhaps in all of human history, was kept under wraps due to the cold war with the Soviets. When actual political contact was finally established, secrecy was continued at the request of the Hifaru. They promised to help the Terran civilization get past its growing pains if Earth would become a willing member of their domain at the successful termination of its childhood. They warned the U.S. government that the Ikkadju were attempting to claim the Earth as their own, and that Humanity would probably not survive incorporation with them, so that it would be in Humanity's own best interest to become an Hifaru protectorate. Secrecy of the deal was maintained, although the NATO allies were individually brought up-to-date over the course of the next several years. After the initial shock, some of them questioned the wisdom of the deal, but none of them were ready to stand against the others. Into the 21st Century Despite heavy doses of secret technical aid during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Earth's ecosystem began teetering, clearly on the edge of a major collapse. The dire situation was mainly a result of the rising world population, which the NATO allies couldn't control, though they were informed that they either had to or face a very bitter ruin. Meanwhile, the Ikkadju grew suspicious that some sort of funny business was going on. Humanity's technological level had risen much faster than expected. In the space of only a few decades, Humanity had harnessed both fusion and gravity, two key steps before the attainment of FTL. This had also provided some breathing space, ecologically speaking, but with the population continuing to skyrocket, even this wasn't enough. Tension mounted on Earth, however, as the NATO alliance and Russia (which had by then also become a trusted ally) started dictating population levels and various global ecological reforms to the developing nations. A sort of anti-imperialism fervor resulted in the third world, causing outbreaks of fighting (called civil wars by commentators, though they were really attempts by the local strongmen to push away rising 1st world influence and reinstate their own power-base). Childhood's End Suddenly, NATO made public the discovery and implementation of FTL. Over the course of ten years, a small fleet of ships had been secretly constructed. The interstellar community was shocked. No other race had ever climbed the technical ladder so swiftly, and before the Coalition could react, news was received that the Solians had made contact with the Hifaru, and that they were already discussing the possibility of Earth becoming a protectorate. The Ikkadju were certain, at this point, that they were being taken to the cleaners, however, they had no way to prove it. They cited the current eco-wars on Earth as well as the balkanized nature of the planet as evidence that the Earthers were not ready to enter the coalition. During a period of ten years, there ensued a political controversy among the coalition members over what to do about Earth. During that time, however, Earth kept busily building warships. The Ikkadju seized a Solian patrol vessel in order to prove their hypothesis that somebody had been giving Earth lots of help. The technology they recovered had clearly been copied. The designs of key systems were among those already in use for thousands of years by other races. At this point, the coalition as a whole realized that the Hifaru must have secretly been providing technical assistance for quite some time. The Ikkadju-Solian War The breaking-point came toward the end of the 21st Century. The Coalition was waffling over what to do about Earth. They couldn't undo the "damage" the Hifaru had done, nor could they reward the Hifaru by honoring Sol's request to become an Hifaru protectorate. Despite the fact that Humanity had not made it to space on its own (and that it certainly would never have if not for Hifaru involvement), and despite the fact that Earth was still building modern warships at a disgusting rate, the High Council seemed to be on the verge of offering Humanity full membership into the Coalition. The Ikkadju decided to take the situation into their own hands before that could happen. They provoked several Solian patrol ships into a small skirmish and then used the incident as a pretense for waging a full scale assault against Earth itself. Though they suffered heavy losses, the attack devastated large portions of Earth, killing billions. The Coalition was shocked and outraged by the incident, and there ensued a storm of protests. Nothing like this had ever happened since the Great War, and while many of the Coalition members were calling for retaliation against the Ikkadju, others were openly relieved that somebody had squashed the barbaric Solians who should never have been allowed to get as far as they had in the first place, while still others simply didn't want to get involved. The Aftermath The player characters are probably military personnel who were either involved in the Battle of Earth or were out on scouting missions and border defense when it happened. They will be alternately feared, hated, pitied, and ignored by the aliens they encounter. One neat part of the game is that (at the GM's discretion) the players get to live through this period of history and revisit Earth after it is nearly reduced to a charred cinder. There will be decisions that need to made regarding how to hide or protect the remaining population from any future attacks. Civilization on Earth will quickly degenerate if they players do nothing. Meanwhile, the coalition will continue discussing what to do with the planet and its remaining population while the Ikkadju may decide to come back and finish the work they started. So is that too happy-happy joy-joy or what? Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 19:47:23 -0800 From: llvogel@teleport.com (Laura L. and Allan Hayes Vogel) Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Tue, 26 Sep 1995 Tony L. Hayes wrote: >I think part of it is matching the corrections to the 2300 AD list. Again, >a little time and effort here could be useful but I agree that we don't >want to get too tied up in this and I don't think we have yet. Okay, I got where you're going right now. The first point sounds like a good idea, and the second one now seems like a reasonable thing to do (though I'll probably not be able to contribute much to that thread). Thanks for filling me in on both of them. >Not at all however I think making some decisions in this arena will >have great impact on the overall game look and feel. I strongly agree! >Take Traveller, how did all those low tech planets (pre-star flight) get so >populated? >Why is the galaxy so _full_? Etc. As I recall, wasn't a minor historical theme in Traveller that of Spengler's cyclical civilizations for humanity? Anyway, I believe that they also had at least one Forerunner type race (to leave all those ruins around - or was that GURPS Space? -It's been a long time since I re-read both of them). Both factors _ought_ to have contributed to the fullness of the Traveller galaxy. Speaking now as an ecologist, I think there is a fourfold answer to Fermi's paradox. First, there is life only on planets orbiting "Population I" stars (Yes, yes, I know that's an out-of-date term, the point is that lifeforms need trace metals for enzyme activation -which ones and how much is a fair game-type of question, but all of the sound biologically based speculation about "alien" lifeforms that I've read seem to agree on that requirement). Second, intelligence _may_ require a climatic "kick start" like the Pleistocene glaciations drying out the African rain forest - such events don't happen very often geologically - the last big episode of glaciation was 100s of million years before. Even if we assume that other environmental problems can cause the development of intelligence, I question whether or not they occur with high frequency given Earth's "average" geological history. Third, there may be a lack of local technological civilizations or those that have such a civilization are without, or only with slow, FTL. Fourth, how many intelligent species survive the equivalent of our rapidly approaching "Time of Sorrows?" I'm fairly certain humanity will make it, BUT will we have the resources to return to space afterwards? I hope so, but I don't know, and since the Time of Sorrows will last a minimum of two generations, I won't get to find out. I'm just hoping we can get a Mars colony up before it happens - I'll feel a lot better about our future in space then. Nevertheless, the point of my apparent digession in the preceeding paragraph was to state that I agree with you that the universe isn't going to be very full, particularly not of intelligent lifeforms. Unfortunately, even though Asimov did quite well in Foundation with a single intelligent species in the Milky Way (and its creation, the robots), that could be a rather sterile SFRPG. >By spending some time thinking about >the universe (or at least our little piece of it) we can lay down a >foundation and justification for future work - aliens, pop density, >etc. - that feels a little more realisitic (as least based on our >assumptions). And that doesn't mean we have to be realistic as in >true to fact but realistic as in not too far from fact and (more >importantly) reasonably internally consistent. I'm in 100% agreement with you. My main question is what the balance is in the last sentence between relative realism and "totally accuracy." If the latter, then the game would have to be limited to relativistic STL drives combined with either "Snow White" and/or booster spice. I did a SFRPG game based upon this set of ideas several years ago (The gamers travelled to a [widely separated] multiple G-class dwarf system so they had a chance to travel to different worlds within the player characters' lives); it seemed to be a decent game devise though we didn't make it into a campaign due to my work load. Also L. Sprague DeCamp used these limitations successsfully in his Viagens Interplanetary SF novels, so these limitations would appear to be a viable system. BUT are such limitations a fun universe to role play in??? Or should starships be like on Star Trek or even faster like in Niven's Known Space? The interaction just between speed of interstellar travel and frequency of intelligent aliens will strongly influence the "feel" of any game. >Just my thoughts Mine too. Please take _EVERYTHING_ above with a large grain of salt, and please excuse me if I've gone too far on anything. Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 16:49:42 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: errors I've been looking at the data and the output file from my program. I'm having trouble getting _any_ of the stars in the 69 catalog to match. I'm going to double check the conversion from RA to polar theta - make sure RA-Dec isn't left handed - I'm virtually sure it isn't but I'm going to double check the definition to be sure. I checked over the parallax to make sure it really was in unit of 0.0001 arcsec (which is standard which is why I assumed it was) and it appears to be (mentioned in the file description). I was putting out x,y,z in parsecs instead of ly which I noticed the 69 data was using - I added a conversion factor (3.26 ly/pc). In short, I can't find anything wrong with the method but can't account for the difference. I expect to find a number of stars that are off slightly but I'm not seeing even vague matches. The only other thing I can think of is that the 69 data is bad. Was it gotten from a astro data source (like the 91 data) or was it entered from a chart in 2300 AD? My thought was maybe in converting the data for use in the game, they either accidentally or purposfully altered it which would explain the lack of matches. Also note that the 91 data covers a larger area then the 69 data - 25 pc vs 50 ly (25 pc ~ 81 ly). Still you'd expect some of them to match since the 91 should be a superset of the 69. Very frustrating! Any ideas? Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 10:10:22 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Tue, 26 Sep 1995, Laura L. and Allan Hayes Vogel wrote: > Speaking now as an ecologist, I think there is a fourfold answer to Fermi's > paradox. First, there is life only on planets orbiting "Population I" stars > (Yes, yes, I know that's an out-of-date term, the point is that lifeforms > need trace metals for enzyme activation -which ones and how much is a fair > game-type of question, but all of the sound biologically based speculation > about "alien" lifeforms that I've read seem to agree on that requirement). This seems to be probable. One fun take on this is a short story by Greg Bear where there was a single intelligent species which evolved around a population I star, the senexi. Since they were alone in the universe, they spread far and wide, only to find that in time faster and smarter beings evolved around population II stars. The ensuing war was quite enormous... > Second, intelligence _may_ require a climatic "kick start" like the > Pleistocene glaciations drying out the African rain forest - such events > don't happen very often geologically - the last big episode of glaciation > was 100s of million years before. Even if we assume that other > environmental problems can cause the development of intelligence, I > question whether or not they occur with high frequency given Earth's > "average" geological history. What about land bridges between different continents? That could lead to the spread of new predators or prey, which could contribute to the development of intelligence. > Third, there may be a lack of local > technological civilizations or those that have such a civilization are > without, or only with slow, FTL. Fourth, how many intelligent species > survive the equivalent of our rapidly approaching "Time of Sorrows?" I'm > fairly certain humanity will make it, BUT will we have the resources to > return to space afterwards? I hope so, but I don't know, and since the Time > of Sorrows will last a minimum of two generations, I won't get to find out. FTL may be a very hard problem, perhaps not theoretically but practically (especially if it requires lots of energy, which could imply that large solar collector factories and high-efficiency energy storage has to be developed). One idea I have toyed with is 'complexity limits': there is a limit of how complex system each species can handle, and to break through one of these limits requires either outside help (another species might find the amazingly hard problem trivial but have trouble with other parts of our physics) or great luck. Maybe GUTs are such extremely complex things most species never succeed in understanding, although some implications (like FTL) are known and used. This could also prevent singularities, civilizations developing faster and faster until they become incomprehensible (James and I have discussed this at length; while I like the idea I agree it might be hard to use in the game) - sooner or latter all civilizations reach a complexity ceiling, where they find that they cannot handle things any more. Either they have to move back or adapt to it, but if it is reached too fast the results can be devastating. Maybe one in ten species manage to get through this stumbling block; the rest annihilate themseves, become static or repeat the cycle more times. Other races avoid such youngsters, because they are bound to have lots of problems they would be only too happy to drag others into ("Yes! You have antimatter conversion! PLEASE give it to us, it would save billions of our lives..."). From the perspective of other species, the only species worth dealing with are those who have stabilized themselves somewhat or those who have begun to travel interstellarly (they might not be pleasant, but they are out there now) or possibly the lucky few that comes up with something unique. > Nevertheless, the point of my apparent digession in the preceeding > paragraph was to state that I agree with you that the universe isn't going > to be very full, particularly not of intelligent lifeforms. Unfortunately, > even though Asimov did quite well in Foundation with a single intelligent > species in the Milky Way (and its creation, the robots), that could be a > rather sterile SFRPG. With FTL, you can colonize other parts of the galaxy too. So there might be just (say) a thousand intelligent species in the galaxy, but many of them have spread far and wide; some remaining in their home regions, others seeking out distant stars. In the scenario I have imagined, galactic culture is concentrated along trading routes and important systems, with many backwaters and seldom visited regions (are you going to spend 10^18 Joules of precious energy to visit that little star, which was catalogued just a few thousand years ago?) > BUT are such limitations a fun universe to role play in??? Or should > starships be like on Star Trek or even faster like in Niven's Known Space? > The interaction just between speed of interstellar travel and frequency of > intelligent aliens will strongly influence the "feel" of any game. I would like FTL to be possibly, but extremely expensive and cumbersome. I have this vision of starships consuming the energy production of a good-sized planet to go into FTL-mode, and requiring utterly expensive materials to build. At the same time, advanced races might be so rich that they can afford big trade fleets, while minor races like humans just have one or two second-hand ships. Note that intra-system travel might be quite economic, especially if you use mini-FTL drives (I think James and I discussed having the energy requirements scale with the square of the distance traversed). Many races probably are more active in-system than on the interstellar scale. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 18:13:46 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Some comments >ones were perplexed. This had never happened before. Other child >races had been able to cope with their changing world without >resulting to violence to solve every problem. Humanity was >somehow different. Actually, I doubt this is true. We know that chimpanzees go to equally pointless and bloody wars (albeit smaller), and the same seems to hold for ants too. On the other hand, wars might be rare among intelligent species due to simple evolutionary constraints. >The key difference, perhaps, was the psychology which evolution >had bestowed. Humanity had never really occupied a specific >ecological niche. They could hunt, gather, and even scavenge when >the opportunity presented itself. Unlike the other child races, >they were versatile in the extreme, and this versatility was >partly the result of a strange mixture of several emotions and >motivations which were the core of the human psyche. As a xeno- >biologist of a later millennium would describe them, Humanity was >as its heart a combination of "fear, opportunism, and every- >being-for-himself high-adrenalin-savagery." This versatility aspect might be interesting to follow up on. While I don't want every to species to necessarily have one gimmick (like in Star Trek: vulcans are logical, klingons aggressive, betazoids empathic, ferengi greedy and so on), all species have their own peculiar traits and abilities. Humans might be exceptionally flexible (the only competition is from the Rollers, soon to be posted) compared to most other races, but perhaps below the mean when it comes to impulse control. >The Great War & The Technology Ceiling > >Around the time that the Vandals were plundering Rome, another >Empire was also in disintegration. Exactly when did the Old Ones interfere actively? I would imagine they began their uplift around 100,000 years or so, spent a few thousand years tinkering with human genes, and then placed an observation outpost in the vicinity to watch and redirect things if needed (no point in having the entire Uplifting Corps stationed on Earth). This outpost may have been more or less active, sometimes helping things, sometimes just watching (different administrations?). >The Old Ones had hatched a >veritable multitude of races, yet, while they were undisputed >geniuses at the art of genetic uplifting, they were somewhat >lacking in the art of government. I like that description! :-) >This was the technology ceiling, the point at >which progress stopped for all "backwater" communities (those >without a multitude to high energy stars such as those societies >which exist in the spiral arms and in the galactic core), and >this created a situation where all races were more or less equal. This seems quite workable. But we have to define some parts of this celing later. >The Coalition > >Though the Old Ones themselves had perished within the early >years of the war, the fighting continued for many decades >thereafter. Without a parental figure to bind them together, the >child races were free to fight each other in pursuit of their >separate agendas. Some of these races were utterly extinguished >during these years. Several others, seeing that the situation had >gotten totally out of control, decided to band together in an >attempt to stop the fighting. This resulted in the Interstellar >Coalition which exists today. This sounds like a quite good background. However, I think we should regard the Coalition as fairly local, maybe extending a few hundred lightyears in all directions (possibly even non-connected, it could be more like a defense treaty like NATO). Beside the child races of the Old Ones, other races may have joined in simply because they liked the idea, wanted protection or were forced to ("It is for your own good!"). >Policy toward Newcomers >Before the race could be totally rubbed >out, however, several Coalition members stepped in to intervene. >The Newcomer was saved, but only just barely. This race could be quite interesting. I get the impression that it is the bad conscience of the Coalition, perhaps it has been given special status etc. >>From that time forward, the policy toward newcomers (races, >uplifted or otherwise, which are just attaining FTL) has been as >follows: > > (1) If they seem capable of peaceful coexistence, then they >are offered membership in the Coalition. If they refuse, they are >prohibited from leaving the confines or their own star system, >but they are guaranteed that their own space won't be violated by >unwelcome trespassers. If they are in a sparsely populated region with no other developing races, they might be given a larger volume to occupy (its quite hard to prevent ships from moving from one system to another). >Alternately, they may request the >guardianship of a coalition member, which means that they are >subject to the laws of that member and are, hence, indirectly, a >member of the coalition, through the auspices of their guardian. Although in this case the guardian is also responsible for their behavior. > (2) If they don't seem capable of peaceful coexistence, then >they may be exterminated for the common good or turned over to >another race for obligatory guardianship. Generally, their star >system is incorporated into the territory of a nearby race, and >that race disposes of the newcomer as they see fit. Any child >race which mismanages its own world such that its civilization >begins collapsing into ruins before it attains FTL automatically >falls into this category. Although in such cases other races seldom step in, since its too messy to deal with until the race is either dead or have stabilized itself. Remember, most races have very little use for savages and there might be some prohibitions among the Coalition members from seizing planets with (potentially) intelligent species left over from the Old Ones (after the Great War there were lots of planets to choose from, although most were a bit damaged). >Already, they began discussing who among them would inherit Sol. >As it happened, the solar system was situated along the border of >two different alien states, the Hifaru and the Ikkadju. I would like to downplay the importance of borders and states; Coalition members could consist of whatever odd forms of government they choose, and some might be fragmented into mutually competing states. > The >former were a small, amphibious, grey-skinned race of vegetarian >bipeds (the Old Ones were bipedal also and had a preference for >uplifting bipeds, believing them more suited to technological >society). The Greys of UFO folklore, right? > The Ikkadju, on the other hand, were large avian >carnivores which longed for garden worlds such as Earth, Hmm, a bit too cliche for my taste. First, I don't think there are that many species out there that would fit with our concept of avians, and carnivores longing to take over the Earth for selfish reasons are a dime a dozen. They are too similar to the Gubru in Brin's "The Uplift War". However, I think we can easily change them to something else if we want to. >First Contact > >First contact between a modern Earth government and an alien race >occurred in the late 1940s between the United States and the >Hifaru. The U.S. military got exceedingly lucky and shot down a >Hifaru reconnaissance vessel which had been damaged in foul >weather (struck by lightning). Was this really an accident, or did Hifaru high command do it to ensure deniability ("Yes, we are dealing with the solians, but only to get our pilots home from those savages!")? Hmm, I get the impression that both the Hifaru and Ikkadju were violating Coalition guidelines by scouting the solar system (beside their allowed listening posts in the asteroid belt). Note that as humanity gained control over gravity, local spaceflight became much easier, and the aliens would have to hide better. On the other hand, if NATO had a monopoly on most of it, they could hide the aliens even better. >Tension mounted on Earth, however, as the NATO alliance and >Russia (which had by then also become a trusted ally) What about China? Russia as a big power in the 21st century is not unreasonable, but a bit boring. And China could have an immense potential, especially if NATO could convince it of becoming more eco-friendly in exchange for alien technology. >The Ikkadju decided to take the situation into their own hands >before that could happen. They provoked several Solian patrol >ships into a small skirmish and then used the incident as a >pretense for waging a full scale assault against Earth itself. >Though they suffered heavy losses, the attack devastated large >portions of Earth, killing billions. If they had reached the technology ceiling as everybody else, but humanity had not, then they would probably have been able to attack with small losses (the Ikkadju might not like the humans, but they are not suicidal, I presume). After all, just a few relativistic antimatter-warheads against major human installations ought to do the job, not to mention the "accidental" release of some old cold-war bioweapons... >So is that too happy-happy joy-joy or what? No, we want DARKNESS! More destruction! :-) I like this background a lot. It has shades of the Uplift Universe of Brin, but it is original. Some notes: The Coalition might be more an economic organization than a military one (a bit like the EEC but possibly even less efficient). Defense against outside threats can be handled swiftly using the combined fleets, but internal squabbles like this conflict (which still might rank quite low on the agenda) are hard to do something about. Why do the various races want Sol? One reason is of course the nice garden world, but there might be other too: it could become an important trading route in the future, if some plans of the Coalition are implemented (guess who wanted that resolution to pass?). Some races might actually be interested in human products or skills ("They are so darn flexible, Ghroool! The Orbs just stop working and the Kloj turn green when the plan doesn't work, but humans just suggest a new plan. Of course, you have to stand the smell."). I think there is a larger galactic society too, where the Coalition is just one of the players. Traders, diplomats and experts from non-Coalition races might be present, and some might also have an interest in the sol-ikkadju affair... From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: errors Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 10:36:49 -0700 (PDT) > I was putting out x,y,z in parsecs instead of ly which I noticed the > 69 data was using - I added a conversion factor (3.26 ly/pc). The 69-data is using units of one lightyear. You may want to output the 91-data as lightyears units instead of parsecs. > The only other thing > I can think of is that the 69 data is bad. Was it gotten from a > astro data source (like the 91 data) or was it entered from a chart > in 2300 AD? Anders took it straight off the 2300AD chart. > My thought was maybe in converting the data for use in the > game, they either accidentally or purposfully altered it which would > explain the lack of matches. Quite possible. It may be partly a result of separate X-Y planes. The solar plane would be a good choice for this, given the origin of the map, however, it is possible they chose the terran equatorial plane (if the two are even different). > Also note that the 91 data covers a larger area then the 69 data - > 25 pc vs 50 ly (25 pc ~ 81 ly). Still you'd expect some of > them to match since the 91 should be a superset of the 69. Yes. This was another reason I liked the 91-data. Unfortunately, it's of little use to us without star type and class data. > Very frustrating! Any ideas? If we can come up with vaguely accurate type and class data as well as non-abbreviated star names (where applicable) for the 91-data, then I'm not going to worry too much about conforming to the 69-data. We can just assume that GDW screwed-up. However, if the 91-data can't give us type and class info and/or their star designations are too obscure (such that we can't figure out which stars are the named ones), then I guess we're stuck with the 69-data, and we'll just have to twiddle the fictional names which GDW provided many of the stars. From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: Some comments Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 11:31:27 -0700 (PDT) > Actually, I doubt this is true. We know that chimpanzees go to > equally pointless and bloody wars (albeit smaller), and the same > seems to hold for ants too. On the other hand, wars might be rare > among intelligent species due to simple evolutionary constraints. We'll, the ants are such a collective society. Chimpanzees, however, are not. Among all the mammals, I know of no other genus outside of hominids which wage mass-murder against their own kind. We are rather unique in this respect. > This versatility aspect might be interesting to follow up on. Well, I don't know of two many omnivore mammals outside of hominids either. Any biologists want to step in? > Exactly when did the Old Ones interfere actively? I would imagine > they began their uplift around 100,000 years or so, spent a few I had originally pinned a date of -30000 years, however, after talking to Joerg about it, he indicated that agriculture didn't really begin until -10000 years, so that was the new date I set in this version of the premise. My basic idea was that our uplifting consisted of only intelligence enhancement, but no physical (i.e. bone structure) modification. > This sounds like a quite good background. However, I think we should > regard the Coalition as fairly local, maybe extending a few hundred > lightyears in all directions (possibly even non-connected, it could > be more like a defense treaty like NATO). Beside the child races of > the Old Ones, other races may have joined in simply because they > liked the idea, wanted protection or were forced to ("It is for your > own good!"). Yes, it certainly isn't a galaxy-wide thing. Probably only a few hundred light years. Maybe a few thousand on the outside. However, we have to indicate what is stopping its expansion (who the neighbors are, so to speak, even though they are far enough away from Earth that they will most likely not entire into the game very much). > Remember, most races have very little use > for savages and there might be some prohibitions among the > Coalition members from seizing planets with (potentially) > intelligent species left over from the Old Ones Yes, but if a species were utterly ruining its homeworld (either turning it into a greehouse or nuking itself), I think they would probably be judged a failure at that point and the nearest aliens would step in rather than let the planet go to waste. > I would like to downplay the importance of borders and states; > Coalition members could consist of whatever odd forms of government > they choose, and some might be fragmented into mutually competing > states. I still think most races would have some form of central government, and most governments would have boundaries of jurisdiction. Otherwise, you have a situation of chaos (which may actually exist in some areas... free trade zones, in effect... maybe Sol is in one of these). > >former were a small, amphibious, grey-skinned race of vegetarian > >bipeds (the Old Ones were bipedal also and had a preference for > >uplifting bipeds, believing them more suited to technological > >society). > > The Greys of UFO folklore, right? The Hafaru are, yes. > > The Ikkadju, on the other hand, were large avian > >carnivores which longed for garden worlds such as Earth, > > Hmm, a bit too cliche for my taste. First, I don't think there are > that many species out there that would fit with our concept of avians, > and carnivores longing to take over the Earth for selfish reasons are > a dime a dozen. They are too similar to the Gubru in Brin's "The Uplift > War". > > However, I think we can easily change them to something else if we want to. Yeah, these guys were just an idea. Ikkadju means something along the lines of Mountain Lords. I was picturing them as something approaching the size of a pterodactyl (pteranodon) though with more advanced wings. But it really doesn't matter what this other race is so long as they can wage war against humans and have the psychology to do so (which was why I made them carnevores). > >First contact between a modern Earth government and an alien race > >occurred in the late 1940s between the United States and the > >Hifaru. The U.S. military got exceedingly lucky and shot down a > >Hifaru reconnaissance vessel which had been damaged in foul > >weather (struck by lightning). > > Was this really an accident, or did Hifaru high command do it to > ensure deniability ("Yes, we are dealing with the solians, but > only to get our pilots home from those savages!")? This is one of the side debates. The Hifaru deny it emphatically. There is no way it can be proven one way or the other. > >Tension mounted on Earth, however, as the NATO alliance and > >Russia (which had by then also become a trusted ally) > > What about China? Russia as a big power in the 21st century is > not unreasonable, but a bit boring. And China could have an immense > potential, especially if NATO could convince it of becoming > more eco-friendly in exchange for alien technology. I think China would have to become democratic before NATO would realistically trust them as an ally. > >Though they suffered heavy losses, the attack devastated large > >portions of Earth, killing billions. > > If they had reached the technology ceiling as everybody else, but > humanity had not, then they would probably have been able to > attack with small losses (the Ikkadju might not like the humans, > but they are not suicidal, I presume). After all, just a few > relativistic antimatter-warheads against major human installations > ought to do the job, not to mention the "accidental" release > of some old cold-war bioweapons... I agree on a theoretical level, however, I was thinking that the Ikkadju would rather not have left survivors if at all possible. Hence, there would have to be something stopping them from finishing the job on the first attempt. It is possible (though unlikely) that the Hifaru supplied Earth all the way to the ceiling. Perhaps, however, another race interveined in some manner, causing the Ikkadju to withdraw before the job was done. I'm open to ideas. > >So is that too happy-happy joy-joy or what? > > No, we want DARKNESS! More destruction! :-) I thought you'd feel that way :-) > The Coalition might be more an economic organization than a military > one (a bit like the EEC but possibly even less efficient). Defense > against outside threats can be handled swiftly using the combined > fleets, but internal squabbles like this conflict (which still > might rank quite low on the agenda) are hard to do something about. I imagine that it probably started as a defense alliance and then sort of gathered more duties from there. Alliances sometimes have a way of evolving over 1500 years into confederations or even something stronger. We have lots of room to play with in as far as how powerful we want this organization to be. > Why do the various races want Sol? One reason is of course the nice > garden world, but there might be other too: The trading route idea is possible but does seem a bit forced. The human products/skills idea also seems a bit too much. I really think that Garden worlds are so damn rare that they would be highly prized by aliens. With a fair bit of technology, you could utterly wipe out an indiginous ecosystem and transplant a new one within the space of a century. It would be like having a tremendously huge starbase, and you wouldn't even have to pay for the materials or the life support. Planets are great. Garden worlds are priceless gems (given their rarity... assuming that terraforming hasn't gone totally off the deep end). > I think there is a larger galactic society too, where the > Coalition is just one of the players. Traders, diplomats and > experts from non-Coalition races might be present, and some > might also have an interest in the sol-ikkadju affair... Yeah. We were talking about the larger galactic society a bit a few months ago. It really isn't necessary to go into much detail at this stage. In fact, the Earthers may not even know about it. It could be one of those things the players discover during the course of the campaign. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 15:39:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: Some comments On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > > This sounds like a quite good background. However, I think we should > > regard the Coalition as fairly local, maybe extending a few hundred > > lightyears in all directions (possibly even non-connected, it could > > be more like a defense treaty like NATO). Beside the child races of > > the Old Ones, other races may have joined in simply because they > > liked the idea, wanted protection or were forced to ("It is for your > > own good!"). > > Yes, it certainly isn't a galaxy-wide thing. Probably only a few > hundred light years. Maybe a few thousand on the outside. However, > we have to indicate what is stopping its expansion (who the neighbors > are, so to speak, even though they are far enough away from Earth > that they will most likely not entire into the game very much). I haven't had time to read and digest everything yet but I have a few comments. Frank Drake and crew came up with his realatively famous "Number of civilizations in the Galaxy" equation some time back. Depending on how conservative or liberal you want to be with certain probabilities you can get quite a range of possible values. However, if we pick, say, a million civilizations as the total number in the galaxy (remember this is not yet to be or once was this is currently viable), then the _average_ sepearation of the races is _300 ly_ or about 90 parsecs for those who prefer that system. For the ancients to have bopped around and uplifted a bunch of races implies two things: 1) the races were all natives of that world - ie. evolved there 2) the acients had some serious tech to be able to traverse those distances so easily (give the average separation of 300 ly). If the races are more closely spaced then we need to ask why? A local abberation? How many races are we talking about? If we can travel relatively easily over the distance of 300 ly, how _big_ is the Coalition? Traveller handled this by setting communications=travel speed which limits the size of your empire (coalition). Next, while it is ideal to have a garden world, any species that can harness the energies to travel between stars should be able to terraform near garden worlds like Mars or Venus. Why risk an attack and possible interstellar war over a planet that you might well have to terraform anyway? How does one wipe out the intelligent race without adversely effecting the eco-balance of the planet? And if interstellar travel is difficult, sending a fleet capable of dealing with an entire planet with a race that is unusually warlike (and therefore better at then you are) is hugely expensive and wasteful! Lastly, if you can wait a few 10's of thousands of years to see _if_ the race is going to be viable, why not build your own planet? Take one large factory ship to a system with no planet in the "correct" orbit. Have it crank out simple robots that fly out to the asteroid belt, and bring the rocks into the correct orbit with carefully calculated energies and trjectories to allow them to _form_ a new world OR push a planet by applying a force over a few millinea to cause it to spiral in or out to the desired orbit OR build an artificial planet ala DeathStar. I guess I'm not fond of the idea of Earth being essentially trashed and Humans as outcasts. Where is the incentive to be Human? You have no homeworld, you are a minor race, you don't really have any allies, you have no assured port to repair or refit your ships, you may not even have access to the same level of tech as the other races. Why not do something like (and mind you this is _right off the top of my head_ and not well thought out) 1) space travel is _NOT_ that hard (relatively speaking) ala traveller but its a little slow - limits your size but allow you to move around a bit and be able to afford to shuffle war fleets around if you want. 2) Human are unusually warlike (and perhaps adept at it). 3) The Hafaru (and perhaps the ancients too) realized that _this_ is what Humans are good at ('A Small Talnet for War') and want to get them on there side as pseudo mercenaries - unbeknownst to Terrans who see them as a kind and generous race. 4) The Ikkadju figure out the Hafaru plan but have no proof, meanwhile the Human are sucking down tech like a sponge and doing what they do best, arming themselves, perhaps at the Hafaru's suggestion - "Other races are not as kind and generous and peaceful as we Hafaru". The Ikkadju decide for reasons of self-preservation to maintain the balance of power by exterminating the Humans. They arrive with a hefty war fleet and slightly better tech then the lowly Humans but the Humans are better warriors. Human battleskills offset higher tech and heavy losses occur on both sides. Perhaps the Hafaru arrives just in time and the Ikkadju - weakened and now vulnerable - back off...for now. 5) Earth is battered but not beaten. The Hafaru couldn't have planned a better political move! The had to protect Earth from the nasty Ikkadju - Earth is greatful, the Coalition is stuck since the Ikkadju made an unsanctioned attack - bad politics. 6) The game begins shortly after the war (a few years? maybe a decade or two?). Earth is still the hot political topic. Rumors of their warlike prowess has made them feared, hated, and/or envied. Hafaru filters most of the info Earth gets and the Coalition is still trying to resolve what to do about the Humans. Meanwhile, the Humans are even more determined and are rebuilding (with covert Hafaru aid? maybe even other races unbeknownst to the Hafaru?) ships, Earth, the Solar system. Perhaps other races are coming to call - looking for mercenaries themselves. This plays on your idea that Human are warlike while the other races aren't so much so. I don't know, just an alternative that still tries to hang on to a lot of your basic ideas. > > > The Ikkadju, on the other hand, were large avian > > >carnivores which longed for garden worlds such as Earth, > > > > Hmm, a bit too cliche for my taste. First, I don't think there are > > that many species out there that would fit with our concept of avians, > > and carnivores longing to take over the Earth for selfish reasons are > > a dime a dozen. They are too similar to the Gubru in Brin's "The Uplift > > War". See above for an alternate reason for the attack. > > >So is that too happy-happy joy-joy or what? > > > > No, we want DARKNESS! More destruction! :-) Now there's an idea! > > Why do the various races want Sol? One reason is of course the nice > > garden world, but there might be other too: > > The trading route idea is possible but does seem a bit forced. > The human products/skills idea also seems a bit too much. I > really think that Garden worlds are so damn rare that they > would be highly prized by aliens. With a fair bit of technology, > you could utterly wipe out an indiginous ecosystem and transplant > a new one within the space of a century. It would be like having > a tremendously huge starbase, and you wouldn't even have to pay > for the materials or the life support. Planets are great. Garden > worlds are priceless gems (given their rarity... assuming that > terraforming hasn't gone totally off the deep end). Or its not the planet but the Humans...explains Human abductions "How do that terrans do that war thing so well..." As always, just some ideas to toss about (or simply toss out). Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 15:47:37 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: errors On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > > I was putting out x,y,z in parsecs instead of ly which I noticed the > > 69 data was using - I added a conversion factor (3.26 ly/pc). > > The 69-data is using units of one lightyear. You may want to > output the 91-data as lightyears units instead of parsecs. I made the modification. Just multiply range by 3.26 before it is used anywhere else. > Anders took it straight off the 2300AD chart. That may explain it. It depends on how careful GDW was. > It may be partly a result of separate X-Y planes. The solar plane > would be a good choice for this, given the origin of the map, however, > it is possible they chose the terran equatorial plane (if the two > are even different). They are. Solar coordinate use the orbit of the Earth as a reference plane while RA-Dec uses the equator as a reference - a rotation of 23.5 degrees. > Yes. This was another reason I liked the 91-data. Unfortunately, it's > of little use to us without star type and class data. I agree. Perhaps we could just stick with the 69 data however, if I get a chance, I will try to calculate and apply a correction to translate the coordinate system and see if I can make any matches > If we can come up with vaguely accurate type and class data as well > as non-abbreviated star names (where applicable) for the 91-data, > then I'm not going to worry too much about conforming to the > 69-data. We can just assume that GDW screwed-up. However, if the > 91-data can't give us type and class info and/or their star > designations are too obscure (such that we can't figure out > which stars are the named ones), then I guess we're stuck with > the 69-data, and we'll just have to twiddle the fictional names > which GDW provided many of the stars. Yep, seems reasonable. If we go with the 69 data, we can apply some corrections based on what feels right and what would add to the game. I'll let you know if I can get the coordinates transformed. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 16:05:06 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Preliminary Info By assuming the X axis' overlap (and I'm not sure of that by any means) and rotating the Y and Z axis by 23.5 degrees, I am able to match some stars. By match I mean the values look closer. I'm going to rewrite my program to pull Magnitudes (since we have them in both data sets) then I'll reformat the 69 data to match the output format of my program (for readability) then sort based on range. We should be able to get a much better idea about matches if that works. I'll let you know when I get it all done and working - might not be until tomorrow though. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 21:38:25 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Tue, 26 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > Can you (if its not too premature) explain the warp drive a little bit > more - as you picture it working (some of your comments hinted but > a little clearer explaination would be useful). OK, here is an attempt: The drive works by warping space in the manner described by Miguel Alcubierre: you cause it to expand behind you and contract in front of you, and this will make it possible for the "bubble" of warped space to move faster than light (since there is nothing preventing space to expand faster than light, and the ship is essentially just moved along). The big problem with warping space is that you would need some pretty titanic energy densities to get the correct warping, and you would also need negative matter to get the correct kind of fields. But this can be circumvented if you can just "polarize" the extremely energy-rich vacuum which surrounds everything (yes, according to QM ordninary vacuum contains around 10^30 kg of energy per m^3 in the form of random fluctuations!). Exactly how this is done is a matter of technobabble, I just postulate that quantum gravity allows it. Thus the FTL drive works as this: lots of energy is fed into the drive system (engineering problem: how to store enough energy or release it fast enough), which does something quantum to it (I have this idea that it involves intense electromagnetic fields acting on extremely heavy metals forcing them into some quantum-gravity resonance). This moves parts of the vacuum energy field to the back of the ship, essentially causing a huge wave of space-time with the ship surfing on the slope. This wave travels FTL with the ship on it (you have to avoid instability; the tidal forces could rip you into quarks) until the destination, where another energy pulse is used to restore the vacuum energy; the ship is suddenly STL and moves with its original speed and velocity. What needs to be determined is the amount of energy needed for the start of the drive. As I see it, the wave is gradually dispersed during flight too, which means that the ship will slow down and higher speeds requires higher energies. Some proportionalities I think work: Energy needed = speed ^ 2 * distance ^ 2 * mass This would make it reasonable to move over shorter distances instead of longer, since you could save energy that way (although there is a lower limit due to dissipation at start, stop and in flight). Mass isn't such a big problem for this kind of ships, you can just sacrifice a bit of speed (double your mass and your speed will decrease with 30%). More advanced races have better drives or better ways of storing energy than less advanced races, but this is a matter of economy rather than technology. I'm right now looking at energy sources too. I think fusion (6.3 x 10^14 J/kg) is the most common on-planet and on-ship system, but solar power (1 GW/km^2 in Earth orbit) is competitive in space. Energy storage as antimatter might also exist, which would be very important for in-system travel and the fuelling of starships (not to mention nasty weapons). If we want something for the really powerful civilizations in the Core, we have matter to energy conversioun through quantum black holes... What kind of gravitic technology do we want? I think it should represent the cutting edge, and its applications would tend to be very high energy (like FTL or gravitic beanstalks) or theoretical. Only the super-civilizations in the galactic core can make quantum black holes and wormhole tunnels. > > One way ships are powered by in-system installations (say, a network of > > lasers) so they can warp away, forcing them to travel between civilized > > systems. But they are much cheaper, and there are strong economic > > incentives for the locals to build refueling stations to get trade. > > So you have two (or more) systems hurling ships back and forth like > a game of catch? Hmm...interesting. Would kind of cut down on > piracy wouldn't it? Yes, the pirates (if they could intercept the FTL ships) would need their own huge energy systems to move away with the loot, which is unlikely. Piracy might be possible in some systems, but then mainly against STL ships. > What are the travel times like? What times do you want? :-) > How do you > handle accidents (aiming errors that is - opps missed the system cause > I was off by 0.000001 arcseconds :-) )? Aiming is a problem in this scheme, since turning the warp fields in-flight is extremely complex and possibly dangerous. If you are missing the system, you have to turn off the FTL and coast into the system - which could take a long time. Although I think in-system traffic can be quite fast if we have antimatter (days to weeks). Collisions during FTL travel can be quite nasty too; destabilizing the vacuum fields and turning the ship and target into a relativistic fireball. However, interstellar dust and such things are rare enough to be ignorable. Sunlight on the other hand might be problematic; if you move towards the sun you will "scoop up" all sunlight along your path and get some quite intese radiation. FTL ships either have to stop outside the ecliptic, or have powerful shielding. This could make for an interesting twist; most ships have to enter systems a fairly long way from the sun, giving defense systems ample warning that something is coming in. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 17:25:12 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: quick note more later but I reformated the 69 data, made the rotation to the 91 data and now I can make a number of matches (it appears on cursory exam). The relevent files are rather big but I can clean them up and ship 'em to you or just give you a name mapping or something. From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: quick note Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 16:38:26 -0700 (PDT) Please send whatever files you think I'll be able to use. I'd be interested in seeing the program you used to do the 69-data rotation as well as an updated version of the last program you sent which operates on the 91-data, but which grabs star-type and star-class info. I was somewhat pessimistic about using the 91-data, but if it's fairly complete in terms of providing the data we need (which I'm still not certain about), it would probably be the better data set for us to use. In any case, thanks very much for all the help. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 20:29:34 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: quick note The star types is in the 91 data but obscurely through color and magnitude. We could try to guess the types, I can provide a chart that would let us make a stab at identifying main sequence, giant and supergiant stars or we could plot out an HR diagram and ID the non-main sequence or the like but it may turn out to be too much effort. Perhaps just cross referencing the two list for the 700+ stars we can ID would be sufficient. In any case, I'll send you the reformated 69 data, the new 91 analysis program and resulting data. Can you uudecode and gunzip? That will make it easier to mail - unless you have an aftp site we could use for the swap. I _thought_ I had one but that's not the case. I found one entry that my code barfed on - not sure why but we can do it by hand if needs be. I'll wait to be sure I can compress and encode before I mail it to you. From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: Some comments Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 17:36:20 -0700 (PDT) Tony had some good comments regarding the premise. I'm going to try to address them below. Regarding the high density of alien races in close proximity to one another: > I haven't had time to read and digest everything yet but I have a few > comments. Frank Drake and crew came up with his realatively famous > "Number of civilizations in the Galaxy" equation some time back. Depending > on how conservative or liberal you want to be with certain probabilities > you can get quite a range of possible values. However, if we pick, say, > a million civilizations as the total number in the galaxy (remember this > is not yet to be or once was this is currently viable), then the _average_ > sepearation of the races is _300 ly_ or about 90 parsecs for those who > prefer that system. Yes, but the mean isn't the same as the median. The distribution may be such that lots of smaller civilizations are packed in the boonies (areas between the arms) while relatively few mega-civilizations keep to the high-energy areas (arms and hub). Secondly, even a million civilizations, which sounds like an awful lot, implies only about one civilization per one-hundred thousand stars. Now, this may be reasonable when you factor in such considerations as how difficult and unlikely it is for a race to spontaneously uplift itself (of course, given the premise, that factor is nullified at least for the local region of space), and how long a civilization is likely to persist past the invention of nuclear toys and all the rest (if we assume a hundred thousand years, on average, and presume that on average, the process has been in motion for the past billion years , then we come to the conclusion that 9999 out of every 10000 civilizations which once existed are now dead), but our premise pretty much takes care of these two very important screening criteria, creating a universe (or at least a local area) much more teaming than we would otherwise expect. > If the races are more closely spaced then we need to ask why? A local > abberation? How many races are we talking about? If we can travel > relatively easily over the distance of 300 ly, how _big_ is the Coalition? I haven't put a fixed number on it yet. It all depends on how many garden worlds and exotic worlds the system creates. One limiting factor is that most stars in the local vicinity are MVs (red main- sequence stars). Joerg recently pointed out that any planets in the biozone of an MV star are going to be tidally locked with their star, producing a world which will be boiling on one side and freezing on the other. Most likely, such a world will not be able to maintain its atmosphere. The planet is almost certain to be dead. Given that MVs make up the majority of stars out there in the local area (50-60% is a rough approximation), we're looking at a lot of dead star systems (unless we loosen the parameters of life- evolving worlds). > Traveller handled this by setting communications=travel speed which > limits the size of your empire (coalition). Assuming a fairly teaming galaxy, we can have other races out there to limit the size of the coalition. Perhaps an empire of galactic thugs. Of course, we'll probably keep the travel-speed cap on communications, unless somebody envisions a likely scheme to have really fast mail (tachyons, anyone?). > Next, while it is ideal to have a garden world, any species that can > harness the energies to travel between stars should be able to terraform > near garden worlds like Mars or Venus. This assumes it is easy to terraform. I really don't know enough about this to have an informed opinion. In Traveller, it was apparently pretty hard. I mean, they had wars often enough. > I guess I'm not fond of the idea of Earth being essentially trashed > and Humans as outcasts. Where is the incentive to be Human? You have > no homeworld, you are a minor race, you don't really have any allies, > you have no assured port to repair or refit your ships, you may not > even have access to the same level of tech as the other races. A grim setting. Dark, dangerous, and forbidding. > Why not do something like (and mind you this is _right off the top > of my head_ and not well thought out) They arrive with a hefty war > fleet and slightly better tech then the lowly Humans but the Humans are > better warriors. Human battleskills offset higher tech and heavy > losses occur on both sides. Perhaps the Hafaru arrives just in time > and the Ikkadju - weakened and now vulnerable - back off...for now. > > 5) Earth is battered but not beaten. The Hafaru couldn't have planned > a better political move! The had to protect Earth from the nasty > Ikkadju - Earth is greatful, the Coalition is stuck since the Ikkadju > made an unsanctioned attack - bad politics. > > 6) The game begins shortly after the war (a few years? maybe a decade > or two?). Earth is still the hot political topic. Rumors of their > warlike prowess has made them feared, hated, and/or envied. Hafaru > filters most of the info Earth gets and the Coalition is still trying > to resolve what to do about the Humans. Meanwhile, the Humans are > even more determined and are rebuilding (with covert Hafaru aid? > maybe even other races unbeknownst to the Hafaru?) ships, Earth, > the Solar system. Perhaps other races are coming to call - looking > for mercenaries themselves. > > This plays on your idea that Human are warlike while the other races > aren't so much so. > > I don't know, just an alternative that still tries to hang on to a > lot of your basic ideas. I like it. Actually, I like it alot. It gives the humans a fighting chance, at least. Heck, we could even release "official" history updates similar to what GDW did with the Fifth Frontier War. If the rest of you can hang with this, I'll be more than happy to revise the premise so it runs along these lines. From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: quick note Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 17:47:44 -0700 (PDT) > The star types is in the 91 data but obscurely through color and > magnitude. We could try to guess the types, I can provide a chart > that would let us make a stab at identifying main sequence, giant > and supergiant stars or we could plot out an HR diagram and ID the > non-main sequence or the like but it may turn out to be too much effort. > Perhaps just cross referencing the two list for the 700+ stars we > can ID would be sufficient. I'm counting something like 3800 stars in the 91-data. We really limit the list if we only take 749 of those. Might be best to build some sort of guestimator into the program. Even if it can't guess for 100% of the stars there, as long as it can identify all the main sequence stars it finds as well as the white dwarfs, we can probably identify the rest by hand either through cross-refing or just guessing. The vast vast majority of stars out there are main-sequence and white dwarf. The rest are just a handful of subgiants, giants, and subdwarfs. > In any case, I'll send you the reformated 69 data, the new 91 analysis > program and resulting data. Can you uudecode and gunzip? That will Yes. Got that covered both in Unix and in msdos. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 21:01:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Anders Sandberg wrote: > another energy pulse is used to restore the vacuum energy; the ship is > suddenly STL and moves with its original speed and velocity. Ok, so you make a bubble of real space for the ship to exist in by warping s-t around it and do the warping in such a way that the bubble moves in a particular direction, is that about right? I can live with this. I can live with the high energy costs. So the ship has to carry energy to stop (and maybe start) unless its in a civilized area where it can draw from the 'energy network'? I just want to be clear on the basic premise since I believe that how FTL works (not the technobable cause we can make up anything we want there as long as it sounds plausable but the time/speed/distance/difficulty) significantly effects how the rest of the game and civilizations and warfare and trade and everything works. > What needs to be determined is the amount of energy needed for the start > of the drive. As I see it, the wave is gradually dispersed during flight > too, which means that the ship will slow down and higher speeds requires > higher energies. Some proportionalities I think work: > > Energy needed = speed ^ 2 * distance ^ 2 * mass So what this really means, in game terms, is a given drive, say the Tony Drive Mark III, will produce a given 'thrust/warp/energy' output. If I put this drive in two different ships, the resulting speed and distance travelled will depend on the difference in mass or, alternatively, with this drive, I can go 1 unit of distance in 1 unit of time or 2 units of distance in 4 times the time (if I did that right)? > This would make it reasonable to move over shorter distances instead of > longer, since you could save energy that way (although there is a lower > limit due to dissipation at start, stop and in flight). Mass isn't such a > big problem for this kind of ships, you can just sacrifice a bit of speed > (double your mass and your speed will decrease with 30%). More advanced > races have better drives or better ways of storing energy than less > advanced races, but this is a matter of economy rather than technology. This would quickly lead to long trips depending on the definition of long. Say we decide the drive can cover 1 pc in a week (Jump 1 in traveller lingo). The same amount of energy will take me 10 pc in 2 years or 5 pc in 25 weeks. On the other hand, if I can build an energy collection device to recharge my super-capacitors in a timely fashon, I could travel 10 pc in, say, a few months by hanging out in a system to recharge and doing short little jumps instead of one big one. > I'm right now looking at energy sources too. I think fusion (6.3 x 10^14 > J/kg) is the most common on-planet and on-ship system, but solar power (1 > GW/km^2 in Earth orbit) is competitive in space. Energy storage as > antimatter might also exist, which would be very important for in-system > travel and the fuelling of starships (not to mention nasty weapons). If we > want something for the really powerful civilizations in the Core, we have > matter to energy conversioun through quantum black holes... Capture (how?) a micro black hole and dump waste material into it, collect the radiation as power. It would take a significant amount of material to render the black hole un-usable at which point you let it evaporate until it is usable again. As a thought. > What kind of gravitic technology do we want? I think it should represent > the cutting edge, and its applications would tend to be very high energy > (like FTL or gravitic beanstalks) or theoretical. Only the > super-civilizations in the galactic core can make quantum black holes and > wormhole tunnels. What about natural wormholes? Or stargates. If we can warp space to slide ships along, could we not map space to find points that are near to each other so we can warp space just till they touch then shoot the ship through from one fold to the next? Just some ideas. Hmm...comments? What do we want for FTL? I kind of like a little easier travel but if there are game benefits to a more difficult method I'm open to hearing them. From: james vassilakos Subject: sfrpg: where was that alcubierre article? Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 18:46:07 -0700 (PDT) > The drive works by warping space in the manner described by Miguel > Alcubierre: you cause it to expand behind you and contract in front of > you, and this will make it possible for the "bubble" of warped space to > move faster than light (since there is nothing preventing space to expand > faster than light, and the ship is essentially just moved along). Actually, Tony might like to see Alcubierre's article first-hand. Wasn't it available somewhere on the web, Anders? I think I have a copy around here somewhere. I'll see if I can dig it up. In the meantime, you may want to post the URL if you can find it. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 22:23:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: Some comments On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > Yes, but the mean isn't the same as the median. The distribution may > be such that lots of smaller civilizations are packed in the boonies > (areas between the arms) while relatively few mega-civilizations keep > to the high-energy areas (arms and hub). Very true. > Secondly, even a million civilizations, which sounds like an awful > lot, implies only about one civilization per one-hundred thousand > stars. Now, this may be reasonable when you factor in such > considerations as how difficult and unlikely it is for a race to > spontaneously uplift itself (of course, given the premise, that >...stuff deleted for space... Actually, the eqn looks like N=pRL where p is the probability factor that accounts for the fraction of stars that could have garden worlds, the number that actually do, the number the developed life, the number that developed intelligence, and the number that can communicate. R is rate of star formation, and L is expected life span of the civilization. The optimal assumpiton is p=1, since R is a known (well, we have a good guess anyway). Give p=1, then the number of civilzations (since p=1) of _any_ kind is 10L. So for 100000 yr lifespan, you get 10E6 civilizations and 300 ly separation. for L=10E6, you get 10E7 civilizations and a 70 ly separation. At L=10E7 the separation is down to 15 ly. The bottom line is, are all the races natural (which I guess is what I was really getting at). These numbers all assume you _evolved_ on your planet. In Traveller, as was pointed out, many races seemed to have been seeded or created in toto by the ancients. Are we going to allow for the possibility that some or even many of the child races are derivative races or creations or are they all natural races that the ancients just 'helped' along? > sequence stars). Joerg recently pointed out that any planets in > the biozone of an MV star are going to be tidally locked with their > star, producing a world which will be boiling on one side and freezing > on the other. Most likely, such a world will not be able to maintain Interesting, why? What causes tidal locking? Also, the extremes depend on the atmosphere or lack thereof. Venus is not tidally locked but is close (rotation ~ revolution but rotation is retrograde). Its temp is relatively uniform because of the dense atmosphere and cloud cover. > > Next, while it is ideal to have a garden world, any species that can > > harness the energies to travel between stars should be able to terraform > > near garden worlds like Mars or Venus. > > This assumes it is easy to terraform. I really don't know enough > about this to have an informed opinion. In Traveller, it was > apparently pretty hard. I mean, they had wars often enough. True, but the wars seemed less over getting planets then over getting power. Traveller had tons of planets (very dense) nearly all of which had colonies (have to assume not all were natives) many of which were not terraformed. Why? Too hard or just not worth it? If you can build a society willing to live in space, in asteriods, on ships, would they mind being in a sealed building or under a doom? The minerals are still there, the resources and at those tech levels, extracting water and air should be easy if there is any at all to get. True terraforming is hard I would think and energy consuming but we may be postulating on huge energy costs just to travel to the next rock, why not spend it on terraforming. Plus some planets are going to be nearly garden (say Mars or Venus) and just need a nudge or a little control. I've seen (granted primitive) speculation on techniques not too far out of range for terraforming Venus and Mars. For example, bio-engineering a microbe to consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen (plant based) that can live in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Eventually, it will spread and 'eat' through the cloud cover (in theory). > war-proficient humans, Hafaru wanted us as mercenaries (decided to > stick with Tony's typo... Hafaru is closer to the correct pronounciation Sorry, and I looked up the spelling too! > than Hifaru anyway), humans suck down military tech from the Hafaru, > Ikkadju get nervous and attack... > > I like it. Actually, I like it alot. It gives the humans a fighting > chance, at least. Heck, we could even release "official" history > updates similar to what GDW did with the Fifth Frontier War. > If the rest of you can hang with this, I'll be more than happy > to revise the premise so it runs along these lines. Geesh, thanks. Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 09:11:16 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: where was that alcubierre article? On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > Actually, Tony might like to see Alcubierre's article first-hand. > Wasn't it available somewhere on the web, Anders? I think I have > a copy around here somewhere. I'll see if I can dig it up. In > the meantime, you may want to post the URL if you can find it. The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity by Miguel Alcubierre. http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/ local/groups/relativity/papers/abstracts/miguel94a.html Quite interesting article, although the general relativity is a bit hard to understand in places. Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 09:42:16 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: sfrpg: star data options On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > Ok, so you make a bubble of real space for the ship to exist in by > warping s-t around it and do the warping in such a way that the bubble > moves in a particular direction, is that about right? Yes, this roughly right. The space in the bubble is almost flat (which is important, since otherwise the tidal forces would rip apart the ship). > So the ship has to carry > energy to stop (and maybe start) unless its in a civilized area where > it can draw from the 'energy network'? Essentially yes. I think most energy is used up in starting the drive and doing the initial warping, only a minor amount is needed to do the "unwarp" at the end of the journey if the navigators have calculated the dissipation correctly. I have this vision of a starting starship coasting out of the ecliptic using normal means, big laser satelites project very powerful energy beams at the drive receivers, and the ship is suddenly warping away, leaving only gravity waves in its wake (I think these waves might be detectable by an advanced technology). > I just want to be clear on the > basic premise since I believe that how FTL works (not the technobable > cause we can make up anything we want there as long as it sounds > plausable but the time/speed/distance/difficulty) significantly effects > how the rest of the game and civilizations and warfare and trade and > everything works. Yes, that was my comment too. If FTL is easy and low-energy, just about everything and everybody will be travelling in space, and you will have a galaxy filled with commerce. If it is harder, then communications will be limited and large areas seldom visited. > > Energy needed = speed ^ 2 * distance ^ 2 * mass > > So what this really means, in game terms, is a given drive, say the > Tony Drive Mark III, will produce a given 'thrust/warp/energy' output. > If I put this drive in two different ships, the resulting speed and > distance travelled will depend on the difference in mass or, alternatively, > with this drive, I can go 1 unit of distance in 1 unit of time or > 2 units of distance in 4 times the time (if I did that right)? Yes, thats roughly my idea. Although I think you have to realign the stabilizer bulbs to fit the geometry of the ship and fields, of course :-) > This would quickly lead to long trips depending on the definition of > long. Say we decide the drive can cover 1 pc in a week (Jump 1 in > traveller lingo). The same amount of energy will take me 10 pc in > 2 years or 5 pc in 25 weeks. On the other hand, if I can build an > energy collection device to recharge my super-capacitors in a timely > fashon, I could travel 10 pc in, say, a few months by hanging out > in a system to recharge and doing short little jumps instead of one > big one. Good point. Yes, I think most cost-conscious crews will take the extra time instead of the extra speed, although how much extra time is reasonable depends on the mission and race. A military mission is intended to be quick and devastating, so it will guzzle energy and get there fast. A trading mission among humans could take a few months, and the only one complaining would be the bored crew. But the long-lived and patient Soft Ones (coming up) would think a trip of a few centuries is just a pleasant chance to let their personalities flow a bit... > > If we > > want something for the really powerful civilizations in the Core, we have > > matter to energy conversioun through quantum black holes... > > Capture (how?) a micro black hole and dump waste material into it, collect > the radiation as power. It would take a significant amount of material > to render the black hole un-usable at which point you let it evaporate > until it is usable again. As a thought. Capturing black holes involves a bit too much luck for those ultra-civs; only minor league groups like the Coalition are on the constant lookout for small black holes. The Galactics just collimate their gamma ray lasers using an asteroid-sized optical system (built out of ultra-dense materials) and *make* their own quantum black holes. If you feed it matter as fast as it evaporates, you will have a 100% matter-to-energy converter. Just don't let it go Chernobyl... > > What kind of gravitic technology do we want? I think it should represent > > the cutting edge, and its applications would tend to be very high energy > > (like FTL or gravitic beanstalks) or theoretical. Only the > > super-civilizations in the galactic core can make quantum black holes and > > wormhole tunnels. > > What about natural wormholes? Or stargates. If we can warp space to > slide ships along, could we not map space to find points that are near > to each other so we can warp space just till they touch then shoot > the ship through from one fold to the next? Just some ideas. Actually, there doesn't have to be any 'vicinity' when we warp space, the universe doesn't have to be embedded in anything. While I am a big fan of wormholes (try reading "Traversable Wormholes" at http://www.nada.kth.se/Trans/wormholes.txt), they would probably change the politics and nature of the game a lot. Just look at the Hyperion books by Dan Simmons for an example of a civilization held together by wormhole gates. If you build a wormhole subway, then there is no real reason for having a metric star map, since you can go from Alpha Centauri to Sol, Epsilon Eridani, Betelgeuse and the Large Magellanic Cloud... > Hmm...comments? What do we want for FTL? I kind of like a little > easier travel but if there are game benefits to a more difficult > method I'm open to hearing them. I think the 2300AD model was quite nice: ships are utterly expensive things, which only nations and big corporations own. But the players are the crew, and are those who actually run them (and if said nation is a heap of radioactive slag 20 lightyears away...). The part about energy requirements is partially due to my estimates of the Alcubierre drive (as all humans probably call it, even if it was originially developed by GreyConoidLight of Mnaxx and Alcubierre just got a certain NATO tip) and some game ideas: energy is the basis of one of the few truly inter-species monetary systems, and it is intimately linked with trade and prosperity. Powerful civilizations have much energy and can do a lot of things, while small civilizations have less energy and have an economic disadvantage. I also like the idea of having to bargain for refuelling (or rather reenergizing) with disapproving aliens... Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 09:27:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: where was that alcubierre article? Unfortunately, the URL is not active. I searched around and found his homepage and his link but it too is not active. It appears they are reorganizing. Perhaps it will come back on line soon. If not, I'll dig around and try to find another copy out there some place. Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 14:38:15 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: Some comments On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > > This versatility aspect might be interesting to follow up on. > > Well, I don't know of two many omnivore mammals outside of > hominids either. Any biologists want to step in? Rats come to mind. And I think cockroaches, ants and wasps are rather omnivorous too. > > Exactly when did the Old Ones interfere actively? I would imagine > > they began their uplift around 100,000 years or so, spent a few > > I had originally pinned a date of -30000 years, however, after > talking to Joerg about it, he indicated that agriculture didn't > really begin until -10000 years, so that was the new date I > set in this version of the premise. My basic idea was that > our uplifting consisted of only intelligence enhancement, > but no physical (i.e. bone structure) modification. What about the increase in brain size (which was very fast)? I would probably place the interference before agriculture, since there were quite sophisticated humans before that (look at those cave paintings: they had art, many tools, organized warfare (30,000 BC) and religions). > Yes, it certainly isn't a galaxy-wide thing. Probably only a few > hundred light years. Maybe a few thousand on the outside. However, > we have to indicate what is stopping its expansion (who the neighbors > are, so to speak, even though they are far enough away from Earth > that they will most likely not entire into the game very much). Communications problems might be one limiting factor, if FTL ships are limited to (say) a few parsecs per week, then it could take months for a message to reach the centrum from the borders, making it hard for the Coalition to work as a defense pact unless it was very decentraliced (I get the impression from your postings that there is some kind of centraliced power, but a lot of things are left to the member species). Other neighbours might be stronger economies (like in the spiral arms), a region with very few inhabitants (devastated by the War or some catastrophy), a competing alliance or maybe region controlled by a single species like the Old Ones. > Yes, but if a species were utterly ruining its homeworld (either > turning it into a greehouse or nuking itself), I think they > would probably be judged a failure at that point and the > nearest aliens would step in rather than let the planet go > to waste. Yes, this seems to be reasonable. The rule might be formulated in quite general terms: naturally evolved biospheres are not to be destroyed. > > I would like to downplay the importance of borders and states; > > Coalition members could consist of whatever odd forms of government > > they choose, and some might be fragmented into mutually competing > > states. > > I still think most races would have some form of central > government, and most governments would have boundaries of > jurisdiction. Note that in your background mankind was not united, although NATO probably had appointed itself as the guardian of mankind (after the war against Earth, NATO personell are in big trouble back on Earth...) I think central government can be quite variable. Some species might actually be a single administrative unit, but most will probably contain many groups which are not at all interested in acting together. The Coalition may simply have the rule that each member species should have a single vote in the Central Council (or whatever), and what representatives are sent is determined by the member species. So the Gools have a delegation from their artficial nation of interstellar affairs, the various groups among the Mothers have special elections for a representative family which actually only represents the spacefaring part of the race, the Laash use direct democracy to determine what to do and the Builders have a good political model as a representative (yes, I'll post the oher species soon). In short, Coalition politics can be utterly bizarre since many species might not be unified enough, and they all have utterly different perceptions of the world. > Otherwise, you have a situation of chaos > (which may actually exist in some areas... free trade zones, > in effect... maybe Sol is in one of these). Hmm, such zones are probably interesting. The Coalition seems to be a bit too inflexible in certain respects, so some systems might be designated free trade zones where it just guarantees security, nothing more. This could help various groups which do not really accept the Coalition (No, the Catholic Church will not allow contraceptives even if NATO and the entire Coalition say they should). > Yeah, these guys were just an idea. Ikkadju means something along the > lines of Mountain Lords. I was picturing them as something approaching > the size of a pterodactyl (pteranodon) though with more advanced wings. They sound quite a bit like the Sung in 2300AD (but they were extremely friendly, too friendly). > But it really doesn't matter what this other race is so long as they > can wage war against humans and have the psychology to do so (which > was why I made them carnevores). You can wage war even without being a predator. Note that predators usually have restrictions against killing each others, while herbivores don't (just look at how doves kill each other). For example, the Ikkadju might regard humans as a promising *nonintelligent* species in need of uplift because they think intelligent species don't war against themselves, or regard humans as being carriers of a kind of spiritual disease they have to eradicate for the good of all intelligent life ("Sorry, nothing personal, but either you submit to prefrontal lobotomies en masse or we kill you!"). > > What about China? Russia as a big power in the 21st century is > > not unreasonable, but a bit boring. And China could have an immense > > potential, especially if NATO could convince it of becoming > > more eco-friendly in exchange for alien technology. > > I think China would have to become democratic before NATO would > realistically trust them as an ally. Hmm, judging from NATO's behavior, I would say they would trust them less if matters were left in the hands of civilians. I think the Conspiracy seems to be mainly military, possibly keeping civilian politicians away from the truth in some matters. And if China remained as centralized as it has always been, then it could really implement some of the NATO measures efficiently. > I agree on a theoretical level, however, I was thinking that the > Ikkadju would rather not have left survivors if at all possible. > Hence, there would have to be something stopping them from > finishing the job on the first attempt. Well, destroying all humans without irreparably harming the biosphere is probably very hard, and the Ikkadju would probably not have wanted that. This depends a bit on the available weapons technology, so here are some ideas: FTL projectiles are extremely destructive and almost impossible to stop. They are the interstellar equivalent of thermonuclear weapons, but much more devastating. Fortunately they do not work well against planets, since the gravitational field disrupts the warp fields of the projectiles and makes them blow up outside the atmosphere (the EMP and radiation still are devastating, but you can protect yourself). Against smaller targets (asteroid bases, O'Neill colonies) they are deadly if you can direct them. Antimatter bombs are nasty, as they release hard gamma radiation which kills most known life. They can come in all sizes, from small tactical weapons and mines (literally tiny antimatter pellets in orbit) to enormous strategic explosions. Conventional nuclear weapons are of course a definite possibility. Biological weapons are perhaps preferred, but requires detailed knowledge of the target species medicine (guess why the Ikkadju abducted people?). In this scenario the Ikkadju did a surprise attack using FTL missiles against the solar system, destroying the major space colonies and defense systems, in addition to frying most electronics on Earth (which probably caused the most deaths). Then the Ikkadju tried to make surgical strikes against the NATO installations and economical centras, trying to render mankind harmless. Either they hoped for more support from the other races, or they coldly calculate that mankind will now go extinct anyway in a few decades. > It is possible (though > unlikely) that the Hifaru supplied Earth all the way to the > ceiling. Perhaps, however, another race interveined in some > manner, causing the Ikkadju to withdraw before the job was done. > I'm open to ideas. I doubt the Hifaru would do that, the remember the Old Ones all too well. But it is possible that the shock of the Ikkadju attack had such big political repercussions they didn't dare conclude it with an actual occupation/extermination, and now instead await a better political climate. An interesting idea: the race which was nearly destroyed by the Coalition once upon a time might decide to adopt and help mankind now. This could cause a lot of interesting political problems (you can tell I like realpolitik, can't you?). > I really think that Garden worlds are so damn rare that they > would be highly prized by aliens. With a fair bit of technology, > you could utterly wipe out an indiginous ecosystem and transplant > a new one within the space of a century. Actually, I think that would be rather hard and probably inefficient (remember, you have to adjust your new ecology to fit the planet, which is also left in a slightly odd state by the extinctions). Garden worlds represent enormous genetic diversity, and this might represent another important reason for their preservation: the cure for common Huff might be that small animal humans call cockroaches... > It would be like having > a tremendously huge starbase, and you wouldn't even have to pay > for the materials or the life support. Planets are great. Garden > worlds are priceless gems (given their rarity... assuming that Actually, I think there are two groups of aliens. One group likes planets and want to preserve them. The other is fairly used to living in orbital stations, hollowed asteroids or such things, and regard planets as merely sources of biomass and possibly good defensive positions. From: larrys@zk3.dec.com Subject: Re: Some comments Date: Thu, 28 Sep 95 10:13:21 -0400 >I like it. Actually, I like it alot. It gives the humans a fighting >chance, at least. Heck, we could even release "official" history >updates similar to what GDW did with the Fifth Frontier War. >If the rest of you can hang with this, I'll be more than happy >to revise the premise so it runs along these lines. FWIW, you have independently arrived at a variation used by Fred Saberhagen in his berserker series. Early entries in the series were introduced by an alien who pitied, feared, and was thankful for humanity, for no other civilization reached star-faring status without first having learned to live together in peace - humans were feared and pitied for that lapse, but the peaceful aliens of the galaxy were thankful for them when the berserkers appeared for humans alone still had what it took to wage war - they themselves were too civilized to be able to do it, and were being wiped out wholesale by the 'zerkers until they discovered humanity - the rest of the series essentially deals with humanity's resistance to the berserkers. This is also a very Cambellian idea, it shows up a lot in old Analog/As- tounding magazines. "With Friends Like These..." is one such, where humanity, after a great war, is bottled up on Earth and locked down behind a forcefield that cannot be broken from the inside. Centuries later, the coalition that did this ran into the Yops, an enemy not as danger- ous as humanity, but more than they could handle in their present condition. They contacted humanity and asked for their help, though humans had seemingly degenerated into a simple pastoral lifestyle. The humans agreed - and when the forcefield was dropped, the planet wheeled out of orbit under humanity's collective psionic power, vanishing the Yop fleet and setting out for the Yop homeworld. As the human ambassador said to the petrified aliens "it's been _such_ a long time since we had a good war..." Another story that somewhat bears on this is Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken" wherein it is explained that interstellar travel is actually pretty trivial - so trivial that vir- tually all civilizations discover it in the equivalent of the 17th or 18th century - and the discovery always leads their technology off in the direction of FTL research. The catch is, FTL tech is good at moving things real fast, but is basically useless for anything else. Humanity missed the FTL turnoff and instead discovered electromagnetism and all the ramifications of that. An alien attack force found Earth and attacked, planning to overawe the natives with their pottery bombs and muskets, and despite their FTL technology were blown out of the sky by human fighters and missiles, then largely finished off with demonic guns that spat "dozens" of bullets a minute. As the last two survivors sat in a jail wondering what kind of creatures these humans were, they speculated on this strange turn-off on the road to progress and were thankful humans hadn't discovered FTL - until they realized the drive system on their starship was largely intact... From: larrys@zk3.dec.com Subject: Re: sfrpg: where was that alcubierre article? Date: Thu, 28 Sep 95 10:21:29 -0400 "Tony L. Hayes" : >Unfortunately, the URL is not active. I searched around and found his >homepage and his link but it too is not active. It appears they are >reorganizing. Perhaps it will come back on line soon. If not, I'll >dig around and try to find another copy out there some >place. Try: http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/groups/relativity/papers/abstracts/miguel94a.html Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 10:32:27 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: sfrpg: where was that alcubierre article? On Thu, 28 Sep 1995 larrys@zk3.dec.com wrote: > Try: > http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/groups/relativity/papers/abstracts/miguel94a.html This one seems to be working. I'm downloading the document and figures now. I'm concerned by three statements in the brief intro on the webpage - "requires exotic matter" and "local distortions" and finally "as seen by outside observers". These have been catch phrases I've seen in the past that people use to mean, 'what I'm about to say can't ever really be done but isn't it interesting how the equations work out if we do this...' However, after I read the paper maybe I'll feel better! :-) Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 17:47:54 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: Some comments On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > Next, while it is ideal to have a garden world, any species that can > harness the energies to travel between stars should be able to terraform > near garden worlds like Mars or Venus. Actually, I think terraforming is hard. Its not a question about energy, it is about being able to transform an entire planet and give it a viable ecosystem which in the end moves it in the right direction (unless you are a "do gooder civilization", moving around and implanting life in the universe just for the fun/ecofriendliness of it). To successfully terraform a planet it has to be near garden, which may actually be a bit rare, and you have to change it radically. I think self-reproducing technology (von Neumann machines) or nanotechnology may be a requirement, and I don't know if we want to have them below the technology ceiling (however, you could do it with ultra-biotechnology maybe, so races who have good xenogeneticists may be in large demand). And even if you terraform a planet it will take a long time, even for a patient race. > Lastly, if you can wait > a few 10's of thousands of years to see _if_ the race is going to be > viable, why not build your own planet? Take one large factory ship > to a system with no planet in the "correct" orbit. Have it crank out > simple robots that fly out to the asteroid belt, and bring the rocks > into the correct orbit with carefully calculated energies and trjectories > to allow them to _form_ a new world OR push a planet by applying > a force over a few millinea to cause it to spiral in or out to the > desired orbit OR build an artificial planet ala DeathStar. Care to estimate the energy requirements for that? I think you will find that sending an FTL fleet is much faster and efficient. > Why not do something like (and mind you this is _right off the top > of my head_ and not well thought out) ... > 3) The Hafaru (and perhaps the ancients too) realized that _this_ is > what Humans are good at ('A Small Talnet for War') and want to get > them on there side as pseudo mercenaries - unbeknownst to Terrans who > see them as a kind and generous race. To make the scenario even more machiavellian: the Coalition may be slowly falling apart: after 2000 years of evolution it has become an inflexible bureaucracy which is more a hindrance than help for many member races, and a few of the more far-seeing races have begun to realize that sooner or later a new world order will appear, no matter what is done. The Hafaru are actually rather frightened of this possibility, and would very much like to be the ones who has the big guns on their side, so they start the Sol Project. Of course, this isn't something the humans or even most Coalition beings know anything about. Some might suspect that something very fishy is going on, but there are no proofs (?). And the recent events might actually hasten the day the Coalition breaks down... > 4) The Ikkadju figure out the Hafaru plan but have no proof, meanwhile > the Human are sucking down tech like a sponge and doing what they do > best, arming themselves, perhaps at the Hafaru's suggestion - "Other > races are not as kind and generous and peaceful as we Hafaru". The > Ikkadju decide for reasons of self-preservation to maintain the balance > of power by exterminating the Humans. They arrive with a hefty war > fleet and slightly better tech then the lowly Humans but the Humans are > better warriors. Human battleskills offset higher tech and heavy > losses occur on both sides. Hmm, if Earth had such extreme population problems maybe massive space colonization in O'Neill-style habitats was underway? That would mean that more humans than expected were out in space in hard to find vessels, giving the humans another advantage. The Ikkadju expected a disciplined fleet of NATO controlled warships, but also found lots of other groups who didn't care at all what happened to NATO high command... > Perhaps the Hafaru arrives just in time > and the Ikkadju - weakened and now vulnerable - back off...for now. > Hafaru filters most of the info Earth gets This could create some interesting twists. The Hafaru would be quite annoyed if humans begun to hear different stories or even encounter some of the dissident groups of the Coalition, so they might try to "help" the humans all the time, just like the overbearing Old Ones. "Of course you are free to go everwhere you want, but remember that you know nothing of the *dangers* out there. Thats why you need our friendly advisors!". Another potential problem could be that mankind isn't as unified as the Hafaru would have liked - they helped NATO because they wanted a single planetary government to manipulate, but there are some groups which doesn't do as NATO tells them (to the great consternation of the Hufaru). > This plays on your idea that Human are warlike while the other races > aren't so much so. Maybe humans are not unusually warlike, but they are very young. Most similarly warlike races just destroy themselves or cool down while they develop FTL, but the humans have artificially been brought to this stage to be the "tame barbarians" of the Hafaru. There might exist other warlike races, but their kind of war have long ago been analyzed and understood, and is no more than an elaborate game of chess/hacking. Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 18:34:42 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: The Evolution of Intelligence and Planets On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > Are we going to allow for the possibility that some or even many > of the child races are derivative races or creations or are they > all natural races that the ancients just 'helped' along? My guess is that the Old Ones mainly helped along natural races (after all, the humans were semi-intelligent before they came along), because they couldn't create or didn't like creating new races, at least during that era (I have one artefact race that might be a later creation). The Coalition seems to consist of a number of races which were uplifted by the Old Ones with possibly a few independent races (former allies or underlings to the Old Ones). But then there might be other races that evolved (or were created) somewhere else and may have spread to this region for various reasons (I have this idea of a loose "galactic society" upheld by some races who trade over long distances). These races are not members of the Coalition, but may be citizens (or whatever the Coalition calls its members). I think we have to think a bit about the evolution of intelligent species. Here is my take on it: * It is uncommon with the spontaneous evolution of an intelligent species, but it happens with (say) 25% probability during the history of a garden world. * Many of these species remain primitive, either locked by some biological flaw (dolphins have no hands, the skroderiders of "A Fire Upon the Deep" had no short term memories) or simply because they never develop an accelerating technological civilization (there might be quite a few species spending their energy on pleasure, religion or art instead). Uplifting usually adds some driving factor to species in this state which makes them begin to develop faster. * When a species begins to develop technologically, it sooner or later runs into trouble - the world is more complex than it has expected, and unexpected problems begin, like pollution, war, diseases or economic disasters. At this stage other species become very interested in what will happen. Either it succumbs to them and move back one or two steps (to primitivism or extinction), or it manages to survive. * Some species never develop FTL and remain in-system, but sooner or latter they reach other star systems anyway using STL ships. They begin to interact with other species, eventually attaining the technological level of the rest of the galaxy (usually with their own specialities or unusual quirks). It may become a major power or remain minor leauge, depending on its structure and politico-economical prowess. * In time three different things can happen: the race is destroyed by some kind of calamity (like the Old Ones), it somehow breaks through the technology ceiling and moves away to the other advanced civilizations in the spiral arms and core, or it becomes more and more static. Some static species have found nice economical niches where they prosper without any change, while others gradually withdraw to their own comfortable systems. In time many static civilizations are at least partially wiped out, since something unexpected they can't handle appears on the scene, but withdrawn colonies may remain for millions of years. > Interesting, why? What causes tidal locking? I think it is the friction caused by rotating the tidal bulge - the planet is distorted into an ellipsoid by tidal forces, and when it rotates it has to do work to deform this shape. This heat is then radiated away. > If you can build a society willing to live in space, in asteriods, > on ships, would they mind being in a sealed building or under a doom? > The minerals are still there, the resources and at those tech levels, > extracting water and air should be easy if there is any at all to get. I think this depends a lot on the psychology of the species and society. The Gools would not mind it the least (they live underground anyway) while humans might feel confined. Maybe some species desire planets at all cost, while others just are happy to be rid of gravity. > True terraforming is hard I would think and energy consuming but we > may be postulating on huge energy costs just to travel to the next > rock, why not spend it on terraforming. Plus some planets are going > to be nearly garden (say Mars or Venus) and just need a nudge or > a little control. I've seen (granted primitive) speculation on > techniques not too far out of range for terraforming Venus and Mars. > For example, bio-engineering a microbe to consume carbon dioxide > and release oxygen (plant based) that can live in the upper atmosphere > of Venus. Eventually, it will spread and 'eat' through the cloud > cover (in theory). Note that neither method involves any big energy manipulation, just the use of self-replication, which is the most powerful force in the universe (no kidding!). What is needed is skill, not sheer power. Actually making Venus habitable even with cloudeating bacteria is probably stupendously hard, since you have to not only stabilize it, you have to make it terrestrial. Mars will never have any great oceans, even if we terraform it it will be dry and cold. Hmm, here is a new class to add to the planet creation program: Terraformed world - this world was a hothouse, primordial, post-garden or mars-like world and has been artificially terraformed to a garden or exotic world, or just artificially seeded with life. The terraformers might still be around. After all, I get the impression of that this galaxy has been influenced by the actions of intelligent life to a large extent (at least on this scale). Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 13:46:50 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: Some comments In my mind, terraforming is a two step process. 1) get the planet to the right temperature and with the right amount of water. If you can do this, the rest is probably easier then you think. 2) establish an ecosystem. Consider Mars for a moment. Let us assume we have the energy to do FTL which everyone has been saying is soooo huge then only megacorps and governments can truely pull it off. For much less energy and easier to obtain (solar, unshielded nuclear, or fusion) I can use robot ship to fetch asterioids - icy asteroids to be exact - and drop them on Mars. Using solar collectors, I beam radiant energy to the surface at a low focus - ie warm not scortch. The heat will melt the liquid water present and the icy asteroids that I'm adding increasing the water level and the atmospheric density. I drop some atmospheric processors to play with air composistion. Now, mind you were talking 10's of thousands of years - just like waiting to see how the local intelligent race evolves though I'd say it could be done in much less time. Once I'm satisfied that the temperature and atmospheric comp are headed in the right direction and have reach a minimal level to support life, transplant micro-organims - base of the food chain. You want to start this before the planet is finished because life effects the temp and you don't want a run away system. After the microbes get a good foot hold, drop in small organisms, bugs, what ever oh and plants too but no major species yet. You keep layering more complex organisms to build up your own eco-system but on a different world. This way you don't have to try to design an ecosystem, just transplant one. > Care to estimate the energy requirements for that? I think you will find > that sending an FTL fleet is much faster and efficient. Ahh, but the energy is readily available from the star, you don't have to generate it, carry it, or produce it in bulk, just collect it as you use it. Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 19:26:53 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: Terraforming On Thu, 28 Sep 1995, Tony L. Hayes wrote: > In my mind, terraforming is a two step process. 1) get the planet to > the right temperature and with the right amount of water. If you > can do this, the rest is probably easier then you think. 2) establish > an ecosystem. Actually, it is probably a good idea to let the developing ecosystem be a part of step 1, since it would actually faciliate the process a bit. The classic black lichens seeded on the martian icecaps comes to mind. > Consider Mars for a moment. Let us assume we have the energy to do FTL > which everyone has been saying is soooo huge then only megacorps and > governments can truely pull it off. Hmm, I think you overrate the abilities of states and megacorps. I meant that FTL requires a *lot* of energy, but not necessarily an entire solar system of solar collectors or something like that. Also remember that a FTL ship is a short-term project with definite goals and pay-offs, while terraforming takes a long time even if speeded up by pouring energy into it and uncertain future benefits (living on a half-terraformed planet may be better than living on a non-terraformed planet, but not much better). > For much less energy and easier > to obtain (solar, unshielded nuclear, or fusion) I can use robot > ship to fetch asterioids - icy asteroids to be exact - and drop them > on Mars. Good start. The problem is of course that there doesn't seem to be enough icy asteroids in the solar system (maybe in the oort cloud). Dyson suggested that we disassemble Enceladus with self-replicating machines instead (they used only solar power to grow, launch themselves and steer towards Mars). Note that we need *lots* of asteroids anyway to make a difference. > I drop some atmospheric processors > to play with air composistion. This can probably be done with microorganisms of various kinds. You would need lots or immense processors to do a difference, but self-reproducing lifeforms (or nanomachines) could do it much more easy. > You keep layering more complex organisms to > build up your own eco-system but on a different world. This way you > don't have to try to design an ecosystem, just transplant one. I'm not sure this works, since ecosystems are dynamical systems which adapt and change in a very complex way. Say you have a lichen and a creature which eats it. This will move towards a steady state, but if you introduce a predator you will get classical predator-dprey oscilliations, making the amount of biomass cycle through time. Already that could begin to upset the still fragile atmosphere. Now try to add more species, and the situation will get even more complex. I think eco-engineering may be major industry in the Coalition. > > Care to estimate the energy requirements for that? I think you will find > > that sending an FTL fleet is much faster and efficient. > > Ahh, but the energy is readily available from the star, you don't have > to generate it, carry it, or produce it in bulk, just collect it as you > use it. Yes, that is true. If you can make the terraforming process automatic or at least independent of your other activities (lets leave it to the ecologist-monks, shall we?) it will pay off in the end. The problem is that it takes so long time that impatient races will not like it. Maybe terraforming is something static races do, a bit of old men doing some gardening after they have retired. Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 13:45:40 -0800 From: llvogel@teleport.com (Laura L. and Allan Hayes Vogel) Subject: Omnivores On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, james vassilakos wrote: >> Well, I don't know of two many omnivore mammals outside of >> hominids either. Any biologists want to step in? And on Thu, 28 Sep 1995 Anders Sandberg replied: >Rats come to mind. And I think cockroaches, ants and wasps are rather >omnivorous too. Yes. Furthermore, most Neoarctic (North American) carnivores as well as many of the Paleoarctic (Europe and Northern Asia) one are _actually_ ominivorous. Felids and some of the mustelids (weasel family) are the only exclusively carnivorous carnivores if my memory serves me right. There are more strictly carnivorous mammals in the pinniped order (or suborder of Carnivora, depending upon your reference). Most of the summer diet of the American black bear is plant material and even a grizzly will browser on grass on certain occasions though these are rare in frequency. The raccoons' love of sweet corn is well known by most rural dwellers, coyotes actually eat more plant than animal material, and Aesop even wrote a fable about a fox and some (possibly sour) grapes. A more interesting phenomenon is the food habits of certain species of Neoarctic rodents. They actually prey more on small insects than eat plant seeds. Omnivory is _relatively_ widespread among larger terrestrial organisms. Strict carnivory is more typical in the marine environment probably due to the size of the majority of primary producers in the ocean vs. on land. Hope this helps. From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: quick note Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 14:01:50 -0700 (PDT) > The star types is in the 91 data but obscurely through color and > magnitude. We could try to guess the types, I can provide a chart > that would let us make a stab at identifying main sequence, giant > and supergiant stars or we could plot out an HR diagram and ID the > non-main sequence or the like but it may turn out to be too much effort. > Perhaps just cross referencing the two list for the 700+ stars we > can ID would be sufficient. Looked at the two lists you emailed. Very nice work. As it so happens, we do have Gliese numbers for the 69-data. Anders didn't type them in, but they're sitting right in the 2300 near star list, and I could enter them into the 69-data file fairly easily. With those numbers, cross referencing the two lists should be fairly easy. In fact, even a program could probably do it. The trick will be identifying the star type/classes and names of the stars in the 91-data but not in the 69-data (since the 91-data set is larger). What I am really looking for here is just the basic color(O,B,A,F,G,K,M) and size(Ia,Ib,II,III, IV,V,VI,VII). If I saw a G2V, I would translate that to G5 in terms of the final data set which the starmap program will be using, so the "2" is superfluous. Of course, whatever algorithm is used to accomplish this should probably be also be used on the 91-data which is also repeated by the 69-data, just to make sure that the algorithm agrees for the most part with GDW's interpretation (except with situations where we think GDW probably screwed-up, such as by having a higher than expected number of subdwarf (class VI) stars). So how difficult do you think it would be to put together an algorithm to identify the basic star color and size based on info available in the 91-data set? Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 22:38:56 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: The Economy and Technology of the Coalition I just had a stimulating phone conversion with a friend, and I simply have to write down some of my ideas: What kind of economy exists within the Coalition? Most essentials are probably produced by each race, there is probably no point in transporting simple foods several lightyears to the consumers unless FTL travel is so cheap it can compete with on-planet or in-system communications. As I see it, the major industries are: Energy: Energy can be transported in a stable form as antimatter kept in holding tanks to be used to power things, fuel STL and FTL ships or used as a weapon. The conversion of energy to antimatter is not that efficient, but if you have lots of energy it makes sense in storing it. This is mainly done using huge farms of solar collectors in orbit in systems with bright stars and convenient asteroid belts (to use as building material for the collectors). 100 km^2 of solar collectors produce around 1 gram of antimatter each day. Heavy Industry: While most races can build their own heavy industry, it is often more cost-efficient to let experts build it for you. Some systems produce compoents or entire structures for fusion, asteroid mining, solar power stations, megascale engineering or atmosphere converters. Communication: Most races need to be in touch with each other, so there is a thriving market for couriers and mail-ships. Weapons: Another thriving market these days. Everything from personal weapons to strategic weapons have a market. Many races (and the Coalition as a whole) may have rules for what individuals, groups and organisations may buy and own, but these rules vary a lot. Starships: A very important market. Some systems produce individual components, while other deal in the design and construction of ships for their clients. Drive systems are of course the most important and expensive part. Services: Most races have their own specialities and quirks, opening up a huge market for various more or less exotic services (as I pet my cat I realize that we humans beside war have a talent for scratching). Experts in various areas are needed: ecology, systems theory, bioengineering, programming, concept design, astrophysics, economics, history, information management and inter-species diplomacy. Various forms of advice are always in demand, some species want art, others religious experiences or computations. Minor industries of the Coalition are (but are not limited to): mining and refining of various materials, trade in various lifeforms, substances and objects, person transport and research. Each race of course has its own priorities. The Gools, for example, import spices from many worlds and export heavy machinery and various chemicals. The Leeches might export some mining products and gardens in exchange for information and machines. Humans might want all kinds of technology and information, in exchange for mercenaries and spices (to the gools). The Technology Ceiling Another thing we have to define is the technology ceiling. Here are my suggestions: Physics: A Grand Unified Theory is known and partially understood, due to its nature its implications are exceedingly hard to determine except for simple cases such as antigravity and FTL. Gravitic technology can create controlled gravity fields, but is limited by high energy requirements and the risk of failures. It is widely believed that wormholes and controlled creation of black holes are possible, but has so far not been achieved. Energy storage as antimatter is the densest known, although fusion is a more efficient way of energy production. Technology: Solid state nanotechnology is very hard to do, but may function in some very limited applications (like the creation of special microinstruments or materials). In its place many species use biotechnology (where the limits depend more on the ethics and biology of the user). Megaengineering is possible (huge solar panel arrays, asteroid colonies, gravitic beanstalks) but quite expensive. Terraforming is done, but takes a long time (there might be a patient race which is hired as caretakers; they develop a stable society and watch over the process). STL ships are in wide use, powered by fission, fusion or antimatter (the latter is very efficient if expensive; a small amount of antimatter is injected into the fuel in the engine, which turns it into a plasma which is expelled). FTL ships depend on various ways of storing or transmitting energy, and the ability to adjust the warp fields in the right way. Information technology: the central problem of the technology ceiling is that there is too much information, and it cannot be tied together by a normal brain. This is worsened by the fact that no species so far has succeeded in creating classic AI at its own level. Neural nets, software agents and expert systems do a fair job but come short of the complexity of a biological mind. Some species solve this by training or growing biological minds to help their computers, or upload skills. Computers are optical or use quantum principles for massive parallelism, world- or system-wide computer networks are common. Virtual realities exist for various sensory modalities, and are very important to some races. Chemistry: Very advanced, almost any concievable material or compound can be created. Intelligent materials, self assembly etc. are in use. Medicine and biology: Varies between races (due to various fundamental biological limitations and possibilities), usually quite high. Cybernetic implants are in use among some beings. Genetic engineering and biotechnology can be very advanced. Well, what do you think? Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 22:55:19 +0100 (MET) From: Anders Sandberg Subject: Machiavellian Plotting Well, here are some more nasty thoughts: Why didn't the Hafaru contact the Warsaw Pact too? One reason might have been that they realized that NATO and the nations linked to it were much more efficient and might serve their purposes better. Another reason might have been that they realized that if they helped the East Bloc with their technology, the environment might have been damaged irreparably. However, as the cold war went on, the Hafaru got nervous (I get the feeling they are rather timid beings really); the arms race was calculated to give the Solians an military edge, but the Hafaru began to worry that WW III might spell the end to their investment. So they decided to pull the plug on the Cold War. How this was done is uncertain, my theory is that they secretly hired some quite good xenosociologists and complexity theoreticians to derail the Sovjet Union in a non-violent way. At the same time they contacted China, which they realized had big potential both to help them and to hur their plans. They made a deal: the Chinese leadership would get some alien goodies if they made their economy a bit western (to ensure cooperation with the Hafaru NATO allies) and worked around the worst environmental and population problems. Democracy or other local matters were outside the Hafaru's interest, since they just wanted to make sure nothing would stop the big Operation. Another thing to think of: Why have computers evolved so quickly, and why was the military so involved with them from the beginning? If graphical user interfaces are so natural for us, why didn't we start with them from the beginning? A paranoid friend suggested that one day a certain young man named Bill Gates was approached by some Men In Black who quietly asked him if he wanted to become the richest man of the 21st century... Windows is really plagiarized from a Hafaru computer (explains its speed and odd colours)! Abductions might have another purpose: the Hafaru want to prepare some medical breakthroughs for the future (and possibly get a good idea for what kind of bioweapons work against humans?). By the way, cattle mutilations are used by NATO/Hafaru to test their cover-up system. And crop circles are caused by tests of gravitic systems. I think I'm getting paranoid/illuminated... good night! Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 13:14:59 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tony L. Hayes" Subject: Re: The Economy and Technology of the Coalition On Thu, 28 Sep 1995, Anders Sandberg wrote: > What kind of economy exists within the Coalition? Most essentials are > probably produced by each race, there is probably no point in transporting > simple foods several lightyears to the consumers unless FTL travel is so > cheap it can compete with on-planet or in-system communications. Or if its exotics. Coffee or tobacco or coca perhaps there are no equivalents on the other planets. > Energy: Energy can be transported in a stable form as antimatter kept > in holding tanks to be used to power things, fuel STL and FTL ships or > used as a weapon. The conversion of energy to antimatter is not that > efficient, but if you have lots of energy it makes sense in storing it. > This is mainly done using huge farms of solar collectors in orbit in > systems with bright stars and convenient asteroid belts (to use as > building material for the collectors). 100 km^2 of solar collectors > produce around 1 gram of antimatter each day. This to me seems...wasteful. Assuming all colonies are in star systems, just collect your own energy - its cheap, just scoop up your photons. You might see high quality, highly efficient collectors (you have a better system for example) but why buy what your home star is _pouring_ out daily (secondly!). Even if we come up with a reason for energy trade, anti-matter is not a good choice for transport. It would have to be transported in electro-magnetic containment tanks which would use a fair amount of energy, increasing the amount of energy needed to get some back. A better method is to split Helium into Hydrogen. Helium is readily available and Hydrogen is far easier to transport then Anti-matter would be. At the destination, pump the Hydrogen into your handy fusion reactor and out come energy and Helium which you can send back for reprocessing back into Hydrogen - a renewable fuel source (well sort of). Naturally, the creation of Hydrogen would be done using 'free' energy like solar power and would only be needed for transport to areas that don't have access to energy. Now, I agree that if you are making ship fuel, Anti-matter is the way to go but for simply carrying the energy around, Hydrogen seems better even though you'll carry more mass then with A-M it'll be easier to deal with. > Heavy Industry: While most races can build their own heavy industry, it is > often more cost-efficient to let experts build it for you. Some systems > produce compoents or entire structures for fusion, asteroid mining, solar > power stations, megascale engineering or atmosphere converters. This seems reasonable especially given the under current that I've been sensing that every race has a strength and a weakness. Some races are going to be 'natural scientists' for example or whatever. > Communication: Most races need to be in touch with each other, so there > is a thriving market for couriers and mail-ships. UPS at FTL seems AOK to me! :-) > Weapons: Another thriving market these days. Everything from > personal weapons to strategic weapons have a market. Many races (and the > Coalition as a whole) may have rules for what individuals, groups and > organisations may buy and own, but these rules vary a lot. This gets back to the heart of the matter. Are these generally peaceful races or not? Perhaps the coalition's chief asset is that these races have lost the will for combat. That's why the Human's scare them so. Sure they fight, but only with failed races from the safety of a sanctioned orbital bombardment. A real war with real combat against equals is terrifying and horrifying. To attack another civilized race? Unthinkable! As a thought. It all really depends on how we view this races. > Starships: A very important market. Some systems produce individual > components, while other deal in the design and construction of ships for > their clients. Drive systems are of course the most important and > expensive part. A subset of heavy industry. > The Technology Ceiling Can someone explain why there should be a technology ceiling? Is this just to keep the races on par with one another? So that they're not too far advanced from the lowly humans? > Technology: Solid state nanotechnology is very hard to do, but may > function in some very limited applications (like the creation of special > microinstruments or materials). In its place many species use > biotechnology (where the limits depend more on the ethics and biology of > the user). This one doesn't seem that hard. Have you seen the microscopic machines and machining being done? One place machined a crown that fit an ant, another built an electric engine and a car that was barely visible to the naked eye. And I'd say we are at a pretty pathetic tech level at the moment.